Gas blast death rises to nine as last bodies found 07/05/2007 00:00

7 May 2007

PALENCIA - The death toll from last week's explosion in the central Spanish city of Palencia rose to nine following the identification of the remains of two more victims.

DNA tests helped confirm that the human remains found in the building's rubble belonged to Petra Rastrilla, 89, and Eduard Dulama, 24.

Gabriel Castañeda, a representative of the national government in Palencia, said the remains of the two missing people had been found as workers combed through the rubble in the days since the blast, and the DNA of the remains matched that provided by relatives.

Rastrilla and Dulama both lived in the five-story building that collapsed last Tuesday following a gas explosion.

Castañeda, who was accompanied at a press conference by Palencia Mayor Heliodoro Gallego, expressed his condolences and those of the national government to the relatives of the victims.

He said the remains of the last two victims had been identified by a police lab in Madrid.

Workers will continue to comb the rubble for human remains still at the site, Castañeda said.

Some 2,100 tons of rubble from the site have been taken to the old La Balastera stadium, but workers have only gone through about 40 percent of it so far, the official said.

The police team assigned to the case also worked on identifying human remains after the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid and the bombing last December of a terminal at the capital's Barajas airport by the Basque terrorist group ETA.

The accident in Palencia is the most serious of its type so far this year and one of the worst in the past decade in Spain, where 71 people died in residential gas explosions.

The structure collapsed around 6:00 a.m. (0400 GMT) Tuesday, and witnesses said they heard a great crashing sound and saw people running into the street. EFE

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news