The death toll from the collapse of the church roof the day before Sunday in Ciudad Madero, northeastern Mexico, became heavier yesterday Monday, reaching eleven dead, after a young woman who was hospitalized in a very serious condition succumbed to her injuries, the authorities announced.

“Unfortunately, we have just learned that another person has died. We have eleven dead,” Madero mayor Adrian Oseguera told the press at the scene of the tragedy, which unfolded during a baptism attended by 62 people.

The victims were six women, two men and three children, according to Tamaulipa Governor Américo Villarreal and local media reports.

Thirteen victims continue to be hospitalized, including a minor “in an intensive care unit”. Search and rescue operations with the help of specially trained dogs were suspended at noon yesterday.

The accident happened on Sunday at 14:18 (local time; 23:18 Greek time), apparently due to a construction failure, the authorities said in a statement. The industrial-style Santa Cruz Parish Church, which was erected about forty years ago, was renovated in 2010.

“What the priest said is that at the moment of communion he heard a beam (of the roof) giving way,” Roberto Chavez, coordinator of Civil Protection in Tamaulipas state, told the press.

“We are living in a very difficult time,” said Jose Armando Alvarez, the bishop of Tampico, under whose flock the church belongs, in a video he uploaded to social networking sites.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed his condolences to the families of the victims on Monday. The tragedy caused a “wave of solidarity from the world”, he stressed during his daily morning press conference.

At the scene, as construction machinery began to remove debris, housewife Beatrice Morales said she was “shocked”. “What happens to one of us happens to all of us, we feel great pain for the families who live this torture,” he said.

On the Gulf of Mexico, Ciudad Madero has a population of just over 200,000.

In 2017, a similar tragedy unfolded in Mexico, when a church in the state of Puebla (center) collapsed during a baptism due to an earthquake. Eleven people, members of the same family, had lost their lives, among them the infant who was to be baptized.