Gas station explosion in Ireland kills at least 10

At least 10 people are dead following an explosion at a gas station in Ireland on Friday, officials said, describing the incident as a "tragic accident."

Reuters reported that the explosion occurred around 3 p.m. local time in northwest County Donegal, near the small village of Creeslough. While Irish rescue workers said they don't expect any more casualties, at least eight additional people remain injured, with one critical patient having been airlifted to Dublin.

The deceased include a pair of teenagers and a younger girl, in addition to four men and three women, all of whom were from the area. Police initially said early Saturday that nine people had been killed, but later told Reuters that an additional victim had died.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Investigators have not confirmed the cause of the explosion, but photos of the scene showed that debris had been scattered throughout the area, and that an apartment complex above the gas station had been blown wide open and had its roof destroyed.

Witnesses told Irish broadcast network RTÉ, "There's nothing to say. There are no words that really can capture something as shocking as this."

In a televised address, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said the accident was "absolutely devastating and quite shocking in terms of the enormity of this tragedy, the scale of it. An explosion ripping through the normality of a community, with people going to the shop, the normal to-ing and fro-ing of life."