Rescue Called Off at Collapsed Party Hall

JERUSALEM â€”  After picking through the ruins of a banquet hall for 42 hours, rescuers Saturday called off the search for survivors despite conflicting claims about whether all employees attending to wedding guests there at the time of the collapse were accounted for.

Nine people, arrested amid growing suspicion that shoddy construction caused the cave-in, appeared in Jerusalem’s Magistrates Court late Saturday.

Among them were the four owners of the building, the contractor responsible for the construction in 1986, the owner of a company that carried out renovations three months ago and an engineer.

A judge ordered two held until Tuesday and the rest until Thursday while the investigation continued.

Twenty-four bodies were pulled out of the ruins Friday. Of the more than 300 injured--or nearly half the guests--about 150 remained hospitalized Saturday. More than a dozen were in serious condition.

At the site of the collapse, several Orthodox Jews among the rescuers began their day Saturday with dawn prayers led by a man in army fatigues and a white prayer shawl. The worshipers, with shawls covering their luminescent searchers’ vests, huddled near a makeshift tarp morgue, bowing their heads and reciting prayers.

Observant rescuers had received rare permission from rabbis to work on the Sabbath, the biblically mandated day of rest. In Jewish tradition, the value of saving lives overrides any other religious commandment.

The day ended with a memorial service at the site, with soldiers from the rescue unit, police, firefighters, ambulance crews and civilian volunteers taking part.

During the day, dozens of searchers used sniffer dogs, tiny cameras and power tools to comb through the rubble. At one point, work was stopped for half an hour after a large chunk of the ceiling dropped, dangling from a few thin rods.

At 5 p.m. Saturday, the head of the rescue team, Maj. Gen. Gabi Ofir, halted the search, saying that after speaking to police he was satisfied that all guests and employees of the banquet hall were accounted for.

Ofir also said the risk of continuing the search in the unstable ruins was too great.

However, Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levy later said the fate of two workers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, remained uncertain. Later Saturday, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the Israeli had been accounted for.

Levy said police were also looking into the whereabouts of foreigners employed in the building, including kitchen staff.