Disco roof collapse kills 3 in Cappadocia in central Turkey

A rock fall caused the roof of a hillside nightclub to collapse in the touristic Cappadocia area of central Turkey, killing three people, reports said Tuesday.

Photo: Disco roof collapse kills 3 in Cappadocia in central Turkey

Rescue workers, using dogs, pulled out the bodies of three people trapped under the debris of the Harem Disco, which collapsed Monday night near the town of Urgup in Nevsehir province, private Dogan news agency and CNN-Turk television reported.

Five people escaped with slight injuries, it said. Cappadocia is famed for mushroomed-shaped rock formations in which Byzantine Greeks carved subterranean cities.

Formed by gas bubbling through volcanic ash, the rock formations were eroded by winds over millions of years to form cones, domes and "fairy chimneys," or basalt boulders balancing atop a thin shafts of volcanic rocks, reports AP.

During the Middle Ages, the area was home to thousands of Byzantine Christians who fled the Turkish conquest of Anatolia, carving homes and churches inside of the rock cones, and in several cases, building underground cities in the rock. Visitors can tour the cities today or take hot-air balloon tours above the area.