ROME — A gas station explosion early on Friday in southeastern Rome injured at least 25 people including nine police officers and a firefighter, local authorities and rescuers said.<\/p>\n
The explosion was heard across the Italian capital shortly after 8 a.m. and sent up a huge cloud of dark smoke and fire that was visible from several areas of the city.<\/p>\n
Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said local police and firefighters rushed to the area after receiving a report of a gas leak. Two explosions followed after they arrived, he added. <\/p>\n
Elisabetta Accardo, Rome\u2019s police spokeswoman, said 16 residents were injured, including two who were in \u201csevere conditions\u201d and hospitalized at Rome’s Casilino hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cNine of the injured are from law enforcement corps \u2014 police and carabinieri \u2014 and one is a firefighter,” she added. “But luckily they are not in life-threatening conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifteen firefighting teams were at the site trying to bring the fire under control. <\/p>\n
Rome prosecutors began a probe into the cause of the explosion, which could be related to a previous gas leak during the unloading phase of liquified petroleum gas at the station.<\/p>\n
A sports center located near the gas station was evacuated swiftly by police following the first explosion, with several children brought to safety. Police said they checked the surrounding area for people who were injured or trapped in nearby buildings.<\/p>\n
Barbara Belardinelli said she and her daughter were slightly injured when they heard the first explosion and left their home to investigate before the next explosion struck them. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as we heard the second explosion, we were also hit by a ball of fire. I thought that a car near us exploded, metal fragments were flying in the air,\u201d she said. \u201cWe felt the fire on the skin, the arm of my daughter is still red, it was horrible.”<\/p>\n
Other residents interviewed by local media said the explosion was so loud and violent it struck nearby buildings \u201clike an earthquake,\u201d breaking windows and ripping off shutters. <\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV said he was praying for those affected by the explosion, which happened \u201cin the heart of my Diocese.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was closely following the developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME — A gas station explosion early on Friday in southeastern Rome injured at least 25 people including…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[31076,347,10102,4216,57,2936,50,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-38547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-31076","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-energy-industry","11":"tag-fires","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-law-enforcement","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-world","16":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114796026355330047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}