of the collapsed indoor market in Moscow today. Photograph: Reuters
A covered market in Moscow collapsed today, killing at least 49 people and trapping others in the rubble.
"People trapped are calling out. They are knocking. The trouble is time is going by," Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the scene, where rescue workers tried to locate survivors as another bitter winter's night loomed.
The building in Bauman district in eastern Moscow caved in at 5.45am local time after an overnight snowfall in the city, which is undergoing one of its coldest winters in a generation.
An Emergency Ministry spokesman put the death toll at 49, with 29 injured being treated in hospital. But as work continued to try to get to those trapped in twisted metal and concrete, with sniffer dogs helping the search, the death toll was expected to climb further.
The accident occurred as vendors were preparing their stalls at the start of a national holiday to mark Defenders of the Motherland Day.
President Vladimir Putin, at ceremonies marking the holiday, called for a "painstaking investigation" to pin down why the building, built in the 1970s, collapsed.
There were about 100 people in the market place at the time. Officials said the death toll would have been much worse if the market had been open for business.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who went to the scene, ruled out the possibility that the disaster was an attack by Chechen militants to coincide with the armed forces national holiday.
Emergency services sent 50 rescue teams, including firefighters, to try to extract survivors from the ruins. Survivors were said to be communicating from the debris by mobile phone to help rescue workers locate them.
The architect who designed the covered market said in a radio interview that its flat roof had not been designed to bear a heavy load of snow. "It seems there was a lot of snow, and nobody removed it," Nodar Kancheli was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as telling a Moscow radio station. "Nobody was allowed to get on to the roof to clear it off."
Mr Kancheli was charged in April 2005 with negligence over the design of the Transvaal Park swimming pool complex, whose roof collapsed in February 2004 under the weight of snow, killing 28 people and injuring 200. He has denied responsibility.
Heavy snow loads have caused fatal roof collapses elsewhere in Europe this winter, killing 66 people attending a pigeon fanciers' exhibition in Katowice, Poland, and 15 in an ice rink in Bad Reichenhall, Germany.