Death Toll In China Hotel Collapse Rises To Eight

Eight people have been confirmed dead and nine more remain missing after a budget hotel collapsed in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, the local government said Tuesday.

Six others were rescued from the rubble of the Siji Kaiyuan hotel, which collapsed on Monday afternoon, the government of the district of Wujiang said on an official social media feed.

Authorities had earlier suggested that 14 people had already been rescued but offered the new tally following "further analysis and screening of new information".

No cause for the disaster has yet been given.

The hotel opened in 2018 and had 54 guest rooms, according to its listing on the travel site Ctrip.

Images from the scene showed orange-clad rescue workers swarming over large piles of rubble.

Suzhou, a city of more than 12 million people roughly 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Shanghai, is a popular destination for tourists drawn to its canals and centuries-old gardens.

Building collapses or accidents are not uncommon in China and are often blamed on lax construction standards or corruption.

The collapse of a quarantine hotel in southern China's Quanzhou city last March killed 29 people, with authorities later finding that three floors had been added illegally to the building's original four-storey structure.

And authorities in May evacuated one of China's tallest skyscrapers, the SEG Plaza in the southern city of Shenzhen after it shook multiple times over several days.