A building explosion in Athens killed four Americans, a British man and his Greek wife. Following an initial investigation, Greek authorities believe a natural gas leak caused the blast.
The explosion Friday morning local time occurred in the city’s Plaka district near the Acropolis. The four American victims were staying in a short-term rental on the first floor, while the other two victims lived in an apartment on the second floor, according to Greek state broadcaster the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation.
Constantina Dimoglidou, a spokesperson for Greece’s national police, said that two people in an adjacent building and a passerby were also hurt with non-life-threatening injuries, according to The New York Times.
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“I heard the noise, I realized that something was falling on the car, but the engine was not damaged and I could drive. When I got out of the car, I saw that the roof was damaged. In addition to the stones, books and papers were falling on the road,” witness Abda Rahman Abdullah, who passed beneath the building that exploded, told the Kathimerini newspaper as translated from Greek.
Officials in Greece have not publicly identified any of the victims. The U.S. State Department confirmed that a gas leak was the cause, according to CBS News, and U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle said on X that the U.S. Embassy in Greece is providing support to the families of the victims.
Neither Ms. Guilfoyle nor Greek officials have identified any of the six victims of the blast. Ms. Dimoglidiou said that the four Americans were due to check out of the rental and leave the country on Friday, according to The New York Times.
Greek authorities currently theorize that the explosion started in the second-floor apartment, which was the only one of the two units to have an autonomous supply of natural gas, according to information provided to the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation.
“As far as I know, neither did the first one that was rented to tourists have natural gas. Only the couple in the second one had a supply,” Mathaois Artavanis, owner of the first-floor unit, told Kathimerini as translated from Greek.
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