ROSTOV-ON-DON, July 23 (RIA Novosti) - The bodies of a woman and a child were found in the rubble of the collapsed residential building in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan on Thursday, a local emergencies official said.
"The bodies were under a concrete slab," the official said, adding that they were being identified.
The whereabouts of three other residents of the five-story building, a section of which collapsed on Wednesday destroying 26 apartments, are still to be determined, the official said.
Emergency crews worked through the night to find survivors in the wreckage but no one had been found by Thursday morning.
Regional emergencies officials cited the poor condition of the building, constructed in the 1970s, as a possible cause of the collapse. Investigators are also considering negligence during reconstruction work.
The building belonged to a local factory and was used to house workers and their families. The factory rejected any responsibility for the incident, saying it had sold the part of the building that collapsed to city authorities.
Survivors have been temporarily accommodated in a nearby school and provided with one-off payments of 15,000 rubles ($480).
