Two buildings - one almost 20 storey tall - have fall down in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, filling streets with building material and covering cars with wreckages.

Authorities say up to 11 people are considered to be inside the buildings and five people have been saved.

The reason of the crumple remains not clear, but onlookers spoke of a huge blast and a strong smell of gas.

City Mayor Eduardo Paes said that they were concentrating on rescue endeavors before evaluating into the mishap's reason.

According to the BBC's Paulo Cabral, rescue workers were able to haul a cleaner from inside one of the pulleys in the debris after he managed to call a friend on his mobile phone.

The buildings – situated near the Municipal Theatre and the headquarters of oil gigantic Petrobras - crushed a four-storey building site on their way down.

The location adjacent the buildings are now filled up with wreckage, with many cars somewhat covered by ruins.

Numbers of emergency workers are at the site and police have cordoned off the area, our correspondent adds.

Electricity to the street has been shut down for security measures.

One observer, who known himself as Gilbert, told Reuters news agency: "It was similar to an earthquake. Initially some pieces of the buildings begin to collapse. People began to flee. And then it all collapsed immediately."

The incident comes a little over three months after an alleged gas blast at a restaurant in the city left three people deceased.

Worries have been increased about the state of Rio de Janeiro's infrastructure as Brazil ready to host football's World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games two years later.

 

In Brazilian Big Brother, a housemate was purportedly raped live on TV watched by millions of viewers.

Police moved into the Rio de Janeiro studio where the crazily well-liked reality show is filmed and taken out Monique Amin, a 23-year-old student who they consider may have been physical attacked after passing out following drink-fuelled party.

Night vision cameras showed male model Daniel Echaniz, 31, go up into bed with her on Saturday and show to have sex with her as she lay insensible below a leopard print sheet.

On Sunday morning, she looked in the 'diary room' - a compartment where housemates make acknowledgements to an omniscient Big Brother - and appeared to have no remembrance of what had taken place in the joint bedroom.

Police officer interviewed her for three hours inside the competitors' house and then took her away for a rape test. A police spokeswoman in Brazil verified that an inquiry had been started into the charges.

Echaniz has not been detained or claimed with any fault but was eliminated from the program by producers for "seriously defective" behavior.

The show's host, Pedro Bial, told watchers: "Big Brother scrutinized his behavior without bounding to results and with the extreme care. The pictures showed a violation of the regulations of the program." 

 

Amin remains on the show whose most latest series only started last week. It averages around 8 million viewers per episode and fascinated 154 million votes for last year's final - around 50 million more than were cast in Brazil's 2010 presidential election.

The Brazilian show is created by Endemol, a Netherlands-based TV firm that was also trustworthy for the British version. The firm has often been condemned for 'baiting' its challengers with alcohol and pushing them into situations apparently formed to cause contradiction. A spokeswoman for the company did not right away return asks for remark.