The death toll after a roof collapsed at a nightclub crowded with people in the Dominican Republic has climbed to 218, the head of rescue operations said Thursday.

“Unfortunately and with regret, (there are) 218 people dead as preliminary data,” Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), told reporters,

adding that 189 people had been “rescued alive” since the collapse at the Jet Set nightclub early Tuesday.