Part of a hotel in western Germany has collapsed, leaving two people dead and two others trapped in the wreckage.
Fourteen people were in the hotel in the winemaking town of Kroev when one storey of the building collapsed late on Tuesday.
Five were able to get out of the building unhurt because they were not in the part that collapsed, police said, but others were trapped.
Rescuers were able to contact some of them by mobile phone.
But getting to them proved to be difficult because the collapse of one storey left two ceilings lying on top of each other, according to Joerg Teusch, fire and disaster protection inspector for the Bernkastel-Wittlich district.
"We have to proceed with caution because the entire building structure is like a house of cards," he said.
Fourteen people were in the hotel in Kroev when one storey of the hotel in Kroev collapsed. (AP PHOTO)
"If we pull on the wrong card, this building is sure to collapse."
Five people were rescued on Wednesday.
Among the first to be saved was a two-year-old child pulled out unharmed and the child's mother, who was rescued with minor injuries.
The child's father was rescued later.
"We all had tears in our eyes and I still feel the same now. The whole story has a very emotional component, because when we arrived, when we looked at the building, it looked like we weren't taking anyone out," Teusch said at a news conference.
Teusch said the cause of the structural collapse had not been determined.
The original hotel building is believed to date to the 17th century, but additional storeys were added about 1980, he said.
He said building work had taken place on Tuesday, but it was not clear whether there was a link between that and the collapse.
Regional public broadcaster SWR said that witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing a large cloud of dust at the time of the collapse.
The rescue operation involved 250 emergency workers, including drone specialists, as well as rescue dogs.
The hotel guests at the time of the collapse were largely German, apart from a Dutch family.
Two Germans, a man and a woman, died.
Kroev is on a picturesque section of the river Moselle near the larger resort town of Traben-Trarbach, and has about 2,200 inhabitants.