The roof of a German ice skating rink with around 50 people inside collapsed amid heavy snowfall today, killing at least one person and injuring 11 others, police in the southern town of Bad Reichenhall said.
As emergency workers battled driving snow to prop up sections of the roof, a police spokesman from the nearby town of Traunstein said that one person had been killed, one seriously injured and 10 others hurt less seriously.
The accident, on the German border with Austria, came shortly after a separate incident in which a party of skiers in the nearby mountains was caught by an avalanche.
One person was confirmed dead and two were missing but seven others managed to dig their way out after being buried in the snow.
"We haven't stopped searching yet, but chances (for the two missing) are very, very bad," a spokesman for the mountain rescue services said.
He said that as night approached, conditions for some 50 military and civilian rescuers and police searching the site of the avalanche had become very dangerous.