Seven people lost their lives after an explosion caused multiple residential buildings to collapse on the Italian island of Sicily.
Sniffer dogs found four bodies in the early hours of Monday, including a nurse that was nine-months pregnant.
The local authority confirmed on its Facebook page that seven people died in the blast, which affected at least four buildings.
Television images showed a mass of rubble, wooden beams and mangled steel in a large empty space in Ravanusa’s centre, with neighbouring buildings charred and damaged.
Authorities have opened an investigation to determine what caused the blast.
“The gas probably found a cavity in which to accumulate,” the head of firefighters in the province of Agrigento, Giuseppe Merendino, told the Rainews24 TV channel.
“This pocket of gas would then have found an accidental trigger: a car, an elevator, an electrical appliance.”
Soon after the explosion, Ravanusa Mayor Carmelo D’Angelo appealed on Facebook for “everyone available who has shovels and bulldozers”.
“There has been a disaster,” he said.
Italy’s Sicily has recorded the highest temperature in European history as a heatwave sweeps the country.
Early reports suggest that Sicily broke the previous European record of 48C (118.4F) set in Athens in 1977.
The finding comes amid a fierce heatwave stretching across the Mediterranean to Tunisia and Algeria.
Fires have blazed across much of the region for more than a week.
