'No sign of life' at Haiti school

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Rescue workers at a collapsed school in Haiti say they have found no more signs of life and will soon start clearing the site where at least 93 people died.

No survivors have been found since four were pulled alive from the rubble of the three-storey building on Saturday, a day after it crumbled.

Rescuers had started to pull down the wreckage on Sunday but stopped when locals wanted to continue the search.

Rescue teams want to start moving the rubble and recovering the bodies.

The owner of the school, in a suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, has been arrested.

Officials have pledged an investigation into the construction of the school and a survey of other schools that might be at risk.

Terrible silence

US, French and Haitian firefighters have been working round the clock using cameras, sonar imaging and dogs to scour the wreckage for any survivors.

But rescuers no longer expect to find anyone alive and will switch their efforts to the recovery of bodies, US firefighter Michael Istvan told the Associated Press news agency.

Everybody is frustrated, we smell the bodies Onlooker <a class="" href="/1/hi/in_pictures/7717240.stm">In pictures: Haiti school collapse</a><a class="" href="/1/hi/world/americas/7717535.stm">'All we could use was our hands'</a>

One of the French rescuers, Daniel Vigier, said on Tuesday: "We have unfortunately found no signs of life."

Speaking earlier, Max Coschi, of Medecins Sans Frontieres, said: "There was a lot of agitation against the police but now there is a terrible silence as hour by hour relatives start to lose hope of finding their relatives alive."

About 500 children and teachers were inside the school when it collapsed. About 150 people were injured.

Almost 72 hours after the event, rescue workers are keen to stabilise what remains of the building and surrounding structures, in what is a high-risk operation.

Heavy machinery has been brought in ready to start moving large and unstable concrete slabs.

Anger boiled over as relatives criticised the pace of the rescue effort

On Sunday, anger reportedly boiled over as relatives demanded rescuers speed up the search for victims in the remains of La Promesse College in Petionville.

Haitian police and UN peacekeepers in riot gear drove away a group of around 100 men who rushed onto the unstable rubble pile trying to remove debris.

Pope Benedict XVI sent a message of sympathy to Haiti, Vatican Radio said on Sunday.

"It's a real calamity. This building was not suitable for a school," said Jean Joseph Exume Haiti's Justice Minister on a visit on Monday.

The Haitian President Rene Preval said the school had been built with hardly any structural steel or cement to bind the concrete blocks.