Updated Wednesday morning

The lifeless body of a 27-year-old Latvian construction worker has been found buried in the ruins of a nightclub and underlying carpark which collapsed at the Seabank Hotel in Ghadira Bay yesterday.

The grim discovery was made at 5.30 a.m. today by rescuers of the Civil Protection Department after his location was pinpointed by search and rescue dogs. There was never any sign of life.

Sources said that it is highly probably that the Latvian died with the collapse during which he sustained serious head injuries with which it was unlikely that he would have survived.

The man was found buried under five metres of compressed material. When the structure fell, it had a pancaking effect and rescuers had to cut through two levels of reinforced concrete to get to the victim.

Following the arrival of court experts, the body was recovered from the debris and taken to Mater Dei Hospital in a police hearse.

The concrete, steel and wood domed structure, which had been in the final stages of construction, collapsed at about 10.40 a.m. yesterday.

Chief Executive Arthur Gauci said the Latvian worker was one of two workers who were dismantling shuttering on the scene of the collapse.

The operation was a difficult one for the rescuers because the state of the structure posed the risk of further collapse, possibly endangering the rescuers. At one time a crane was used to lift a section of the collapsed structure, but parts of it fell back down.

The missing worker was found under tons of rubble in the remains of the underground car park, which appears to have collapsed first, bringing down the overlying nightclub.

The Seabank Hotel is currently closed and undergoing a major extension which will see it grow to 500 rooms, making it one of the biggest in Malta. It had been planned to reopen in May.

A number of workers who had been close to the site of the collapse appeared distraught and some had tears in their eyes. One of them said the collapse happened very suddenly.

"The whole thing just caved in from the centre," he said. 

He said it was fortunate that the collapse had not brought down a large crane - one of four around the site - as the incident would have been far worse.