At least 37 people died when a motorway bridge collapsed in the northern Italian city of Genoa, the authorities have confirmed.
A 250ft-long section of the Ponte Morandi bridge gave way yesterday morning during a violent storm, sending cars, lorries and massive chunks of concrete tumbling down 160ft onto warehouses and factories below.
Overnight, the death toll rose to 37 confirmed fatalities, with five of the dead yet to be identified, reports Italian news agency Ansa.
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Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said three children, aged eight, 12 and 13, were among the victims.
Emergency services, including 200 firefighters, sniffer dogs and heavy machinery to lift the debris, are working around the clock to locate those trapped in the rubble of the collapsed bridge.
Two of the three search zones established yesterday have now been fully explored, Ansa reports. Rescue workers are now combing the third for more victims, living or dead.
So far, 16 people have been rescued from the rubble and taken to hospital - 12 of them in critical condition.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who arrived in the port city last night, will meet some of the wounded today as he visits two local hospitals.
Meanwhile, “more than 400 people have been evacuated amid fears other parts of the bridge might fall”, the BBC reports.
The operator responsible for the motorway said that “work to shore up the foundation of the bridge was being carried out at the time of the collapse”, NBC News reports.
The entire bridge, which was built in the 1960s, is to be demolished, according to Deputy Transport Minister Edoardo Rixi.
Helicopter footage shows the scale of the devastation beneath the collapsed section, which ran above “shopping centres, factories, some homes, the Genoa-Milan railway line and the river”, says Ansa.
The moment of the collapse was inadventantly caught on camera by local man Davide di Giorgio, who was filming the storm raging over the city on his phone when the bridge fell apart. He can he heard shouting “Oh Dio!” (Oh God!) as the road gives way:
