The snow claimed the lives of at least two other people in the same area when an avalanche struck near Bad Reichenhall, the southern town on the Austrian border.

About 32 people were injured, some seriously, in the accident at the ice skating rink, police said, adding that the dead included a 12-year-old and another younger child.

The rescue efforts were a race against time because some victims may be pressed against the ice and at risk of hypothermia, said a spokesman for the private aid group Malteser which sent staff to counsel victims' families.

About 50 people were in the building at the time of the collapse, which came on one of the last days of the German school holidays.

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

But rescue efforts were complicated by continued snowfall following a blizzard that began overnight.

The poor weather led authorities in the Berchtesgaden region to issue a general disaster warning. Traffic was snarled throughout the region, impeding the arrival of rescue teams to Bad Reichenhall.

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.

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 in the rink 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 in the Reiter Alm range of the Alps 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 had spent New Year's Eve in a mountaintop cabin and were on an off-piste skiing expedition Monday when the avalanche struck.

Snow slides claimed the lives of four skiers in the French Alps at the weekend, while two climbers were also found dead near Mont Blanc, buried beneath snow at about 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) altitude.

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