At least five people, including two children, were killed and about ten are missing after the roof of an ice rink collapsed under heavy snow in a town in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany.
The snow claimed the lives of at least two other people in the same area when an avalanche struck near Bad Reichenhall, on the Austrian border.
About 32 people were injured, some seriously, in the accident at the ice skating rink, police said, adding that the dead included a 12-year-old and another younger child.
The rescue efforts are a race against time because some victims may be pressed against the ice and at risk of hypothermia.
About 50 people were in the building at the time of the collapse, which came on one of the last days of the German school holidays.
The fire brigade used cranes to lift remaining sections of the roof to allow better access in the search for survivors. Some 300 rescue workers including staff from the nearby Austrian city of Salzburg are on the scene.
But rescue efforts were complicated by continued snowfall following a blizzard that began overnight.
The roof of the rink, built in the 1970s, caved in at about 4pm this afternoon local time (3pm Irish time).
It was not immediately clear what had led to the collapse in a
region accustomed to heavy snowfall each winter.
In the avalanche incident, ten people were reportedly caught in the sudden snow slide in the Reiter Alm range of the Alps but seven were able to free themselves.
Two members of the group were later found dead, while rescue teams are still searching for the third.
The group had spent New Year's Eve in a mountaintop cabin and were on an off-piste skiing expedition today when the avalanche struck.
