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| - A team of Israeli engineers and rescue specialists on Sunday reached the site of a Florida apartment building that partially collapsed three days ago, killing at least five people with 156 still missing. Many members of the local Jewish community were among those affected by the tragedy in Surfside, near Miami Beach, and Israel had vowed to help with the agonizing search through the smoking mountain of debris. The 12-story oceanfront Champlain Towers South pancaked in the middle of the night Thursday as residents slept. Surveillance video of the collapse showed it coming down in just a few seconds. The rescue operation has been agonizingly slow and painstaking, and fears of a much higher death toll are climbing with each passing hour -- though rescuers have stressed that there may yet be survivors trapped inside the rubble. "This is one of the best, if not the best, and the most experienced rescue teams, Israeli rescue teams," Israeli diaspora affairs minister Nachman Shai said as the team arrived in Surfside early Sunday. "They've been all over the world in many similar situations." The Israeli specialists will join rescuers armed with heavy machinery and sniffer dogs who have been working around the clock since the building came down. Earlier, Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz had vowed the team would "make every effort to help save human life, and to offer our support to the Jewish community and to our American friends." In Surfside, there are about 2,500 Jews -- about half the town's population -- and many of them are members of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement, according to the Israeli media, though locals say the numbers have grown since the coronavirus pandemic. A team from Mexico had also arrived, Surfside mayor Charles Burkett told ABC on Sunday, without giving more details. "We don't have a resource problem," he said. "We have a luck problem. We need to get more lucky right now." At least 18 Latin American nationals are among the missing -- including Uruguayans, Argentines and Paraguayans. Canada has also said at least four of its citizens may be "affected," without elaborating. Late Saturday, officials said they had been able to battle back a fire that for days had hampered their efforts, spreading acrid smoke throughout the site. Families of the missing have expressed frustration and anger at the wait as concerns grown about the building's condition before the collapse. A study in the 1990s had showed land subsidence in the area, while an engineer's survey of the building in 2018 had pointed to "major structural damage" to a concrete slab beneath a ground-level pool deck, as well as "abundant" damage inside the parking garage. Authorities have stressed that the reason for the collapse is not yet known, and could take months to determine. US media have reported that one resident filed a class-action lawsuit against the building's owners seeking compensation for victims less than 24 hours after the tragedy. bur-st/bbk
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