France
Two “lifeless” bodies found in the collapsed building in Marseille
Twenty-four hours following the explosion that devastated a building in Marseille, two bodies were found by rescuers, who are still looking for six other people.
Updated
The Marseille public prosecutor said on Sunday that the rescue services were looking for eight people presumed missing in the rubble.
AFP
Twenty-four hours following the gigantic explosion which blew up a four-storey building in Marseille, in the south of France, the rescue services discovered the first two bodies in the rubble, out of eight people presumed missing.
“Two lifeless bodies” were discovered, firefighters said in a statement shortly following 1 a.m. Monday. But “given the particular difficulties of intervention, the extraction (of the bodies from the site) will take time”. “This night the pain and the pain are great”, reacted in a press release the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, on the spot from the beginning to coordinate the operations.
“We continue to do everything to carry out the rescue operations”, he continued, assuring that “all the services of the City, accompanied by the services of the State, are always, at this very moment, fully committed to further research.
“Extreme Violent”
The public prosecutor of Marseille had indicated earlier on Sunday that the rescue services were still looking for eight people presumed missing in the rubble of a four-storey building in a central district, which was blown up overnight from Saturday to Sunday by an explosion.
Since the start of the rescue operations, the work of the rescuers has been hampered by a persistent fire under the rubble. The intervention of the rescue dogs was particularly complicated by these very difficult conditions. The explosion, “extremely violent” according to prosecutor Dominique Laurens, occurred at 00:46 on Sunday, as evidenced by the surveillance cameras that captured it.
17 rue de Tivoli, a building housing five apartments in a rather residential area of the city center, was completely blown up. The two adjoining buildings were badly damaged, but all their occupants were able to escape or be saved by firefighters. One of these buildings collapsed later in the day, burying the scene under even more rubble but without injuring the rescuers. The other is also threatening to collapse.
No children
The eight missing are “people of a certain age and a young couple in their thirties”, but there would be no children or minors, said Dominique Laurens. She also mentioned a ninth person “who is currently being sought at 19 rue de Tivoli”.
Five people were slightly injured and 33 in total “affected”, according to the authorities. A sign of the devastating effects of the explosion, 199 inhabitants of the district – representing 90 households – had to be evacuated and 50 requested emergency rehousing.
During the explosion “everything shook, we saw people running and there was smoke everywhere, the building fell on the street”, told AFP Aziz, a man who preferred not to mention his name. family, but declared that he had a night food business in rue de Tivoli. The cause of the explosion was Sunday at the end of the day “impossible” to establish, according to the prosecutor, in particular because of the impossibility for the legal experts to access the unsecured site.
But “gas is obviously part of the tracks”, she indicated, as before her the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône or the deputy in charge of security at the town hall of Marseille, Yannick Ohanessian, according to whom several witnesses mentioned “suspicious smells of gas”.
Shock for the city
“Hell”, headlines the regional daily “La Provence” on Monday with a photo crossing out its entire A taken a few hours following the collapse showing firefighters on the rubble of the building which obstructs the street, in a cloud of smoke caused by fire.
In a city marked in recent weeks by the proliferation of fatal shootings linked to drug trafficking which have claimed the lives of several young people from working-class neighborhoods, the collapse of the building, located in a residential area, close to streets with very lively cafes and restaurants , caused a new shock.
(AFP)
