The snow claimed the lives of at least two other people in the area when an avalanche struck in the Reiter Alm range of the Alps near Bad Reichenhall, a southern town on the Austrian border. A third person was missing.

Between 20 and 25 people were injured in the accident at the rink, a police spokesman said.

"The situation is catastrophic," a Bavarian Red Cross spokesman said, adding that the recovery operation was extremely difficult.

The dead included a young woman and a young man, police said. The child killed was about seven or eight years old. The fourth was not identified.

The area around the rink was evacuated but rescue efforts were complicated by continued snowfall, following a blizzard that began overnight and reportedly dumped some 30 centimeters (12 inches) of snow.

Traffic was snarled throughout the Berchtesgadener region, impeding the arrival of rescue teams.

The roof of the rink, built in the 1970s, caved in at about 1500 GMT. It was not immediately clear what had led to the collapse in a region accustomed to heavy snowfall each winter.

About 300 rescue workers including staff from the nearby Austrian city of Salzburg were on the scene. The fire brigade used cranes to lift remaining sections of the roof to allow better access in the search for victims.

"We fear that there are several children among the dead and injured," said Peter Volk, a spokesman for the private aid group Malteser, which sent staff to counsel victims' families.

He added that the rescue efforts were a race against time because some victims may be pressed against the ice and at risk of hypothermia.

Meanwhile, the coach of the local EAC ice hockey club, Thomas Rumpeltes, said the snow was to have been cleared from the roof immediately before its collapse.

Rumpeltes said he had received the report from city authorities at about 1430 GMT -- about half an hour before the accident -- and cancelled a practice for a youth team.

He said no one had warned of a risk of collapse and that the snow removal was a precautionary measure.

In the avalanche incident, 10 people were reportedly caught in the sudden snow slide but seven were able to free themselves, police said.

Two members of the group were later found dead, while rescue teams were still searching for the third.

The group spent New Year's Eve in a mountaintop cabin and were on an off-piste skiing expedition Monday when the avalanche struck.

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