Regional government receives more than 500 calls about people who are ‘unaccounted for’ following the fire in Los Gallardos

So far, only seven ‘genuine reports of disappearances’ have been filed with the Guardia Civil

Europa Press

The Andalusian minister for health and emergencies, Antonio Sanz, called on Saturday for a distinction to be made in relation to the fire in Los Gallardos (Almeria) ... between ‘missing persons’ - those whose whereabouts are unknown and who have been reported missing to the Guardia Civil - and “untraceable persons”, meaning those whom their relatives are unable to contact.

Speaking to the media from the forward command post in Turre (Almeria), the minister called for a distinction to be made between the number of people reported missing and the number of calls made by relatives searching for their loved ones, as the latter “may already be around 500”.

“We may be sending out a message that is not true,” he warned those who treat these terms as synonymous, given that so far there have only been seven “genuine reports of disappearances” with the Guardia Civil, a figure which, in turn, is lower than the 12 fatalities recorded to date.

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• Almeria fire

  • the post-mortem examinations of the 12 fatalities whose bodies were recovered throughout the day have already been carried out at the Institute of Forensic Medicine (IML) in Almería, and the DNA samples and biological profiles obtained were sent to Madrid at 7.30pm on Friday so that the identification could be carried out.

    “Until the results of the DNA matching with relatives are available, it will not be possible to proceed with the identification,” the minister said, following the difficulties encountered in recent hours in determining the age, sex or origin of the bodies.

    It should be noted that the Guardia Civil has set up an office at the Guardia Civil station in La Garrucha (Almeria) for relatives to report missing persons following the fire. The main priority is to identify the missing persons and to collect the DNA samples needed to identify the victims as quickly as possible.

    The Guardia Civil has appealed to the immediate families of those missing in this incident to visit one of these offices so that the identification process can be expedited.