Emergency services found the missing teenager dead in a neighboring house, which was also badly damaged, a police spokesman said early this morning. The building in Bavarian Swabia was reduced to rubble after an explosion on Friday afternoon.
A 68-year-old resident of the house, who had initially been searched for, had not been in the house during the explosion, according to a police spokesman. The police found him unharmed.
According to the police, the emergency services managed to enter the partially collapsed residential building next to the explosion site late on Friday evening. There they found the body of the missing 17-year-old in the rubble and recovered it. The dead man was on the second floor of the residential building.
"Huge damage" after the explosion
The police support group and the emergency pastoral care team provided extensive support measures for relatives and those affected at the scene, the police added. Well over 100 emergency personnel from all the aid organizations and the police were deployed.
An employee of the situation center spoke of a "huge amount of damage" and an "enormous amount of rubble" that first had to be removed. An excavator from the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) was used for this.
The surrounding buildings were also massively damaged by the detonation at around 5.20 pm. One firefighter sustained minor injuries while working in the rubble.
According to a dpa photographer, parts of the house were blown about 100 meters away by the explosion. According to the police, neighboring buildings and parked vehicles were also considerably damaged by the blast wave and the debris that was flung away.