Riot police were drafted in to maintain order at the site of this week’s explosion in a low rise apartment block in Rotterdam after locals tried to search the wreckage for two missing men.

One body was found early in the evening after relatives had been looking through the rubble, despite calls by the police to stay away.

Safety experts say the impact of the explosion was so great that the remains of the building are in imminent danger of collapse. Demolition experts are now removing the rubble but relatives say they want the other two victims brought out before their bodies are damaged any further.

Two men were arrested on Wednesday night trying to access the site, which has been sealed off by a fence.

“We waited yesterday, we respect the emergency services, but we want to wash and bury him in line with Islamic ways,” one relative told the AD on Wednesday. “If royalty were lying here, you would dig day and night. We were born here. We want respect and help.”

The cause of the explosion has not yet been established, but it took place in a garage underneath part of the complex where there were apartments. Seven homes have now been declared uninhabitable.