Death toll rises in Ireland gas station blast

(CNN) — Nine people were killed and eight people hospitalized in an explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said on Saturday.

In a statement released Saturday the Irish Police said they could “now confirm nine fatalities as a result of this incident. The search and recovery for further fatalities continues.”

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.

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.

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