Philippines ends rescue efforts for 16 missing after building collapse 

Emergency officials in the northern Philippines have ended a two-day rescue operation for 16 people missing after a nine-storey building under construction collapsed, killing at least four people.

The focus shifted on Tuesday to recovering the remains of the victims after the bodies of four people, including a Malaysian man and two trapped construction workers, were pulled from the debris of the condominium project that collapsed onto a nearby hotel in the city of Angeles, north of Manila, early on Sunday.

“We know how hard this is for you,” Maria Leah Sajili, information officer at the regional Bureau of Fire Protection, told a news briefing on Tuesday.

“We sympathise with what you are going through. Rest assured, we did everything we could to save lives, and now we have to move forward,” she said.

Alfredo Albis, 55, told the AFP news agency he believed two of his cousins who worked with him at the building site were among the missing.

“They were working here to earn for their families,” said Albis, who was asleep at a nearby barracks for workers when the structure collapsed.

Authorities called off search and rescue operations late on Monday after rescuers, using life locator equipment, determined there were no longer signs of life beneath the rubble.

Seventeen people had originally been listed as missing, but rescue officials said one of them contacted officials on Monday to confirm he had not been in the area at the time, Sajili said.

Officials said up to 70 people were employed at the construction site, although most had gone home for the weekend.

Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo, reporting from Angeles, said the last 48 hours have been a “rollercoaster” for families of construction workers still believed buried under the rubble.

On Sunday, rescuers detected signs of life from two people and saw them alive, but optimism quickly turned to pessimism when one was found dead and the other died shortly after being freed, Lo said.

On Monday afternoon, rescuers saw signs of life using thermal sensors in the same area, but authorities called off search and rescue, theorising that heartbeats detected may have come from animals in the rubble, he added.

“My hope of still finding him alive has collapsed,” Lea Casilao, whose husband remains missing, told the Reuters news agency.

Casilao said she and her husband had planned to meet at the construction site on Sunday afternoon, with her husband supposed to pick her up.

When she was unable to reach him, she went straight to the site and saw the tangle of concrete, mangled metal, and collapsed scaffolding.

“I kept calling his number, but nothing,” said Casilao, 47, sitting in a makeshift tent as a bulldozer outside began clearing debris from the road.