An American family on a trip to Athens, Greece was killed in a Friday morning building collapse — just before they were set to leave the city, officials said.
The four tourists, who have not yet been publicly identified, were staying in a two-story building that buckled after suffering a suspected gas leak, a Greek fire brigade official said on Saturday.
Two other people, an elderly British man and his Greek wife who lived on the second floor, also died in the tragedy, according to the BBC.
Three others were injured in the dawn explosion, which also damaged nearby homes and shops and littered the surrounding blocks with rubble and broken glass.
The killed Americans were expected to check out to catch a flight from Athens airport at 3 p.m. on Friday but didn’t show up, a police source told Reuters.
The family comprised an older couple, their son and his girlfriend, Greek police told the New York Times.
Officials have not yet released their names, ages or where in the US they are from.
They were staying in a street-level apartment in Plaka that is typically rented out to tourists, CBS reported.
The explosion appears to have been caused by a failure in the building’s natural gas network.
“[The incident] has nothing to do with the external network. Clearly, we are dealing with a failure in the construction of the building’s internal network,” Andreas Grammatikogiannis, the deputy mayor for civil protection of the Municipality of Athens, told state-run news agency AMNA.
The investigation remains ongoing.
The historic Plaka district of the city is a popular tourist destination and is near the Acropolis monument and the Temple of Zeus.
“We are talking about an incredible disaster,” said Athens Mayor Haris Doukas, adding that damage had occurred along the street the building was in, as well as behind it.
The area remains insecure, with investigators still working to determine if two nearby buildings would be able to remain standing or if they have to be demolished.
With Post wires.
