Four American tourists were among six people killed when an explosion at dawn on Friday collapsed the small residential building in central Athens where they had been staying, officials said Saturday. The blast struck a three-storey building in the Plaka district, a neighbourhood near the Acropolis thick with tourist lodgings.
Athens mayor Haris Doukas said the cause was likely a gas leak. “We are talking about an incredible disaster,” Doukas said, per AFP. He added that two nearby buildings were in a dangerous state and that inspections were under way “to determine if they can remain standing or if they also have to be demolished.”
Greece’s state broadcaster ERT identified the other two dead as an elderly British man and his Greek wife who lived on the second storey of the building. The American family had rented a first-floor apartment, according to the Kathimerini newspaper.
A family hours from the airport
The four Americans were preparing to leave for the airport later Friday to fly home when the explosion tore through the building, Kathimerini reported. The New York Times reported that the family consisted of a couple, their son and his girlfriend. Greek authorities did not immediately release their identities, ages or hometowns, and it was not clear which part of the United States they were from.
The owner of the ground-floor apartment, Mathaios Artavanis, told Kathimerini he was away when the blast hit. He said he tried afterward to reach the British-Greek couple who lived in the building, without success.
By Saturday, AFP reporters at the scene saw mechanical diggers hauling away debris and thermal-imaging cameras in use as rescuers worked the site.
Warnings a year before the blast
Questions about whether the disaster could have been prevented are already surfacing. According to a letter published by Kathimerini, residents in Plaka had warned the city and utility companies a year earlier about the danger of gas leaks or short circuits in the neighbourhood. The residents’ association had pushed for a fire drill to identify weaknesses in the local emergency response plan.
A citizens’ group said on social media that one resident on the street where the explosion occurred had alerted the authorities after smelling a possible gas leak. It was not immediately clear how officials responded to that alert, or to the earlier warnings.
The explosion knocked down the residential building and damaged properties and vehicles along the street. Plaka is one of Athens’s most popular tourist quarters; the nearby Acropolis, among Greece’s best-known landmarks, drew 4.6 million visitors last year. The blast is a reminder, in a district that depends on visitor traffic, of the aging infrastructure that runs beneath the streets where tourists rent apartments.
With files from AFP, as reported by Breitbart.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/26/four-american-tourists-among-six-killed-in-athens-building-blast/