The French foreign affairs ministry on Wednesday confirmed that four French nationals were among those who died in the collapse of a motorway bridge above the north-west Italian city of Genoa on Tuesday morning.
Italian authorities said on Wednesday that at least 39 people died in the disaster, and another 15 people are hospitalised with injuries, nine of them in a serious condition. Several other people remain missing.
A section of the Morandi bridge about 200 metres-long crashed 45 metres to the ground during a violent rainstorm on Tuesday morning, taking dozens of vehicles with it. The reasons for the collapse has yet to be established.
Most of those in the vehicles travelling along the section when it collapsed died amid the falling rubble, when cars and trucks were left crushed on the ground below.
The French foreign ministry gave no details of the identities of the four French victims, found together in one of the cars that had fallen to the ground, but French and Italian press reports said they were two women and two men travelling to a techno music festival in Italy.
According to several French media, the two women and one of the men were from the region around Toulouse in south-west France and the second man was from the southern town of Orange. According to French daily Le Parisien, the two women were aged 19 and 21. It said one of the men was aged 22 and the other was described as in his “early 30s”.
Italian daily La Stampa said the women were first identified by their jewellery.
Also according to Italian media, a French-registered removals truck was found below the collapsed bridge, which had reportedly been crewed by two Romanian nationals, although there was no official confirmation of the report.
The bridge, called the Ponte Morandi after the late architect who designed it, was opened in 1967, and is a part of a viaduct carrying the A10 motorway above part of the port city of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. The motorway, which links nearby France and Italy, is a major route for tourists and goods traffic.