Dead children found in rink ruin

RESCUERS yesterday pulled three more dead children from the ruins of a skating rink in south-eastern Germany and searched the treacherous rubble for one last missing woman, two days after the roof collapsed on people enjoying their New Year holidays.

The death toll reached 14, with a 40-year-old woman still believed buried.

Pope Benedict XVI, who grew up nearby, sent a message of sympathy to the grieving town.

Hope for another miracle - like the rescue of a five-year-old girl with only minor injuries the day of the accident - had dwindled by the time teams reached the three bodies.

They had been crushed beneath the twisted skeleton of steel and wooden beams that had been Bad Reichenhall’s ice rink until disaster struck on Monday afternoon.

Some 50 people, many of them children on school vacation, were inside at the time.

Eighteen people were injured badly enough to be taken to hospital.

One of the survivors, teenager Elfriede Datz, said on German television from her hospital bed that “all I know is there was a very loud bang, and more I don’t know.”

“I can’t remember.”