AFP, Released Sunday, December 12, 2021 at 9:39 AM.
Four people have been killed and five others are missing after a four-storey building exploded in the Sicilian city of Ravanusa, according to a new report by local authorities on Sunday.
An earlier report had said two were dead and seven were missing.
Two women were found alive beneath the rubble and paramedics, with the help of dogs, are still searching for the missing.
The death toll was four, the local civil defense said on Twitter.
Television footage showed a huge wreckage and wooden beams littering the ground, and neighboring buildings burned and damaged.
According to officials who began the investigation, a gas explosion may have been the catastrophe on Saturday evening.
“The gas is probably concentrated in a pit. This gas pocket can detect an accidental trigger: a car, an elevator, an electric utility,” Agrigento fire chief Rainews 24 commented on Giuseppe Merendino.
Shortly after the explosion, Ravanusa’s mayor, Carmello de Angelo, made a plea on Facebook to “anyone with shovels and bulldozers.” “It was a disaster,” he said.
About 50 people have been displaced, the mayor told Rainews24.
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