There was an enormous bang in the morning and then a house was left in ruins. The cause is suspected to be a gas bottle. A whole family was affected – from the youngest, only two, to the 80-year-old grandmother.
Saviano – At least three people from a family were killed when a house collapsed as a result of a gas explosion near the southern Italian city of Naples. The bodies of two small children aged four and six and the 80-year-old grandmother were recovered from the rubble of the house.
The search for the 40-year-old mother was still ongoing. The hope of finding her alive was considered to be slim. The father and another brother (2) were taken to hospital with serious injuries.
According to the authorities, the explosion occurred at around 7 a.m. According to investigations so far, the cause was a gas bottle in the grandmother’s apartment. The exact background was initially unclear. The couple and their three small children lived on the first floor of the building. The grandmother lived one floor up.
Rescuers dig with bare hands
First the four-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother were discovered dead, then the grandmother. The search for the missing mother made only slow progress until the afternoon. The rescuers dug through the rubble, sometimes with their bare hands.
Witnesses reported a huge explosion on Sunday morning that could be heard everywhere in the community of 15,000 residents. “It sounded like the bang when an airplane breaks the sound barrier,” a neighbor told the television station Rai. “But then we saw a cloud of dust rising and realized that it was a house collapsing.” Saviano is in the hinterland of Naples, about 30 kilometers from the center of the city. dpa
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