UK Edition
About 20 people, mostly CSKA Moscow’ football fans, were injured on Tuesday after an escalator at a metro station in central Rome broke, rescuers said.
Only one of the people hurt is in a serious condition, a spokeswoman for Rome’s civil protection department said, while the others were being treated for less serious injuries.
The Repubblica metro station, close to Rome’s central train station, has been closed to the public, as the rescue operations were ongoing.
CSKA Moscow is due to play against AS Roma in the Champions League later on Tuesday and hundreds of its supporters were on the move to reach the Olympic stadium.
Fire brigade spokesman Luca Cari told The Telegraph that what they saw when they arrived on the scene indicated that people crushed at the bottom of the escalator as they started piling up on it.
“Only the last two meters of the escalator were damaged, but the rest of it looked fine. The escalator likely blocked after people started crushing at the bottom of it,” Cari said.
He added that the dynamics of the incident remained unclear, but reported that witnesses on the spot said that Russian football fans were jumping and singing while descending the elevator before it broke.