CNN
—
Ten people, including two teenagers and a young child, were killed in Friday’s explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said.
Irish police said that among the 10 dead in the blast in Donegal ere four men, three women, a teenage boy, a teenage girl, and another younger girl. Police said earlier that eight people had been injured.
The explosion happened shortly after 3 p.m. local time on Friday in County Donegal at the Applegreen petrol station on the outskirts of the village of Creeslough.
Police said they believed it was a “tragic accident,” and the largest number of civilian casualty seen in decades in the region.
Superintendent David Kelly said: “This is a tragedy for our community. There are families left devastated.
“I want to offer, on behalf of myself and my colleagues that attended the scene, our very sincere condolences.
Speaking on Saturday morning to the national broadcaster RTE, Irish Prime Minister, known as the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin expressed his condolences.
Martin said: “It is 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 toing and froing of life.
“Community is what defines our people and we are witnessing a terrible tragedy in a wonderful community,” he said.
