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MADRID: Spanish emergency services have recovered the bodies of four people from beneath the rubble of a six-story building that collapsed in central Madrid while being refurbished into a hotel, local authorities said on Wednesday.
“It is with deep sadness that we confirm that Madrid firefighters have recovered the bodies of the people who went missing after the collapse,” Mayor Jose Luis Almeida wrote on X.
The victims have been identified as three men aged between 30 and 50 from Ecuador, Mali and Guinea-Conakry and employed at the site as construction workers, as well as a 30-year-old woman, the renovation project’s architect.
Their remains were found early on Wednesday, nearly 15 hours after the collapse of the building’s interior structure that left its facade intact, in a search-and-rescue operation in which police and firefighters deployed drones and sniffer dogs. Three other construction workers were injured.
One construction worker named Mikhail was pumping concrete into the building’s lower floors and was outside when the collapse occurred. He said he saw a large cloud of dust and immediately sprinted away.
“I was the first to run, I didn’t care about anything else. I’ll save my life first and, if I can, save others later,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
According to Madrid’s online registry of buildings under construction the property was built in 1965. It underwent two technical inspections in 2012 and 2022 and was classified as “unfavorable” due to “the general condition of the facade, exterior, partition walls, roof, roof terraces and plumbing and sewage system.”
The former office building, located in an area of downtown Madrid popular with tourists near the opera house and royal palace, was being converted into a four-star hotel by developer Rehbilita, according to information on its website. Rehbilita did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The property belongs to Saudi-based fund RSR, a real estate investor specializing in high-end hotels and tourist apartments in Spain and Portugal. RSR bought it for 24.5 million euros ($28.5 million) in 2022.
Its renovation, approved by municipal authorities in December 2024, was expected to last two years. ($1 = 0.8613 euros)

LONDON: Ukraine is intensifying strikes on Russian refineries and oil infrastructure, with more than 30 attacks since early August, aimed at weakening Moscow’s ability to finance war against its neighbor.
Current consequence?
Russia is the world’s third-largest producer and second-biggest exporter of crude oil. Oil and gas revenues represented about 30 percent of its budget in 2024, or largest source of state funds according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Kyiv’s attacks have so far been “quite effective,” with Russian refinery production rates having “dropped around 10 percent,” Homayoun Falakshahi, analyst at energy research group Kpler, told AFP.
Faced with a risk of shortages, Moscow recently restricted exports of petroleum products until the end of the year and extended a ban on gasoline exports.
Rystad Energy analyst Janiv Shah said that Russia’s refinery production dropped to an average of 4.9 million barrels per day by mid-September, down about 400,000 bpd compared to the first half of 2025.
The scarcity of Russian refined products has significantly widened the gap between the price of a barrel of Russian crude oil and that of refined products.
The impact on pump prices is already being felt. As of September 1, retail gasoline cost 6.7 percent more compared to the end of 2024, according to Russia’s official statistics agency Rosstat.
This despite a sharp drop in the price of a barrel of crude oil over the same period.
Long-term impact?
Russia’s situation risks worsening because damaged infrastructure typically takes an “extended time” to return to normal operations, Shah explained.
This at a time when revenue from Russian crude oil is primarily affected by falling global prices as markets expect abundant supplies in the coming months.
SEB bank analyst Bjarne Schieldrop believes the “situation will likely become worse... as Ukraine becomes better at attacking Russian refineries,” forecasting an end to exports of all Russian oil products as well as the introduction of domestic rationing.
The US envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, has floated the possibility of long-range strikes by Ukraine against Russia using American weapons.
In trying to export some of the oil intended for its refineries Russia has come up against difficult logistical problems, while the number of countries willing to import more of its crude is limited.
Strikes versus sanctions?
So far, international sanctions aimed at weakening Moscow “are not working,” according to Adi Imsirovic, director of the Surrey Clean Energy consultancy.
Delayed implementation of certain sanctions gave Russia’s President Vladimir Putin time “to build a parallel trading system,” he said.
Washington’s doubling of tariffs on many of India’s products has failed to curb the country’s purchase of Russian crude.
On the other hand, with the withdrawal of Western oil companies from Russia, investment in the nation’s energy infrastructure has declined considerably, limiting its ability to increase crude output over the coming years.
Russia, which produces “around 9.25 million barrels per day,” according to Falakshahi, has a “maximum production capacity of 9.45 mbpd” compared to around 10 mbpd before the war.