Sports Center Collapse Kills 4, Hurts 16 in Spain

Part of a sports center collapsed in high winds Saturday in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona, killing four children and injuring 16 other people, officials and witnesses said.

Rescuers work in part of a sports center which collapsed in high winds killing four children and...

Rescuers work in part of a sports center which collapsed in high winds killing four children and trapping and injuring others in Sant Boi Llobregat, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009./Inset: A covered body is brought out of the sports center. Freak weather conditions have caused winds gusting to 160 kph (100 mph) in many places throughout Spain. A woman died when a wall fell on her in Barcelona and a traffic officer was killed by a falling tree in northwest Galicia.

(Manu Fernandez/AP Photo )

Freak winds gusting to 160 kph (100 mph) in some places caused at least six other deaths in Spain and France, officials said, for a total of at least 13 deaths in the last two days.

Emergency workers at the Barcelona sports center could be seen putting three children's bodies into ambulances and pulling another 16 injured children from the rubble before the rescue effort ended. Accident investigators arrived on the scene to take photographs and carry out other attempts to document the cause of the collapse.

A fourth child died in Sant Joan de Deu hospital, a regional government official said on condition of anonymity as required by agency rules. Three other children were in serious condition and the other injured people, including two adult baseball coaches, were either lightly injured or already released from hospital, the official said.

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A woman who said she had seen the accident told Spanish national broadcaster TVE that the children were preparing to play on a baseball field in the Sant Boi de Llobregat suburb when they took shelter under a viewing stand with a corrugated metal roof.

A woman died when a wall fell on her elsewhere in Barcelona and a traffic officer was killed by a falling tree in northwest Galicia. A road worker died in the northwest village of La Palma de Cervello due to a falling tree, a man was crushed to death by a falling wall in the eastern city of Alicante and a fisherman died after being rescued from a sinking boat in northwestern port city of La Coruna.

Three villages around the eastern town of Nucia had to be evacuated after winds blew down a high-tension power pylon and started a fire in a forested area, the town mayor said.

Heavy gusts were fanning fires around the town, said Bernabe Cano. The leisure park Terra Mitica, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, is located seven kilometers (4 miles) south of Nucia, with the wind blowing south.