The body of a missing British pensioner has been recovered from the rubble of a gas explosion in Athens that destroyed a two-storey building and killed six people.
The blast tore through the property in Plaka, close to the Acropolis and the Temple of Zeus, at about 7.30am on Friday. A 77-year-old British man and his 78-year-old Albanian-born wife had been seen on their second-floor balcony shortly before the explosion.
Fire officials believe a leak in the second-floor gas supply line caused the blast, although a full investigation has been delayed while the search operation continues.
The bodies of all six missing people have now been found, including four American honeymooners. The two couples, aged in their 30s and 40s, had been staying in a ground-floor flat rented for a short period.
Relatives in the United States had appealed on social media for information about the American victims. One relative wrote: “The building that collapsed in Plaka about 13 hours ago is believed to have been housing my cousins Ian and Florida. They are on their honeymoon.”
One woman was the first of the victims to be recovered, after rescuers found her in a bathroom in the wreckage on Lysikratous Street during the early hours of Saturday. She was taken to Athens’ Elpis Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Television footage showed yellow ambulances filling the narrow street as rescue workers carried stretchers from the ruins, with each body covered in silver foil.
About 30 firefighters and six vehicles, including specialist teams from Greece’s EMAK disaster squad, searched through collapsed concrete slabs. Two women were also rescued from a neighbouring building in the hours after the explosion and taken to hospital.
Athens deputy mayor Panagiotis Harlaftis said hopes of finding survivors had been fading as crews searched the building’s bedrooms.
“We have released the sniffer dog and completed attempts to find survivors,” he said. The teams were pushing into the building’s “inner sanctums, mainly the bedrooms”, where “the explosion may have caught them in their sleep”.
