City authorities say all those missing are now accounted for as death toll rises to 43

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The search operation for those missing after the Morandi motorway bridge collapsed in the Italian port city of Genoa ended overnight after the last three bodies were found, bringing the official death toll to 43.

A 200-metre section of the bridge gave way in busy traffic on Tuesday, plunging vehicles, concrete and twisted metal to the ground 50 metres (165 feet) below.

After three bodies were recovered from a crushed car over the weekend, the Genoa prefecture raised its official death toll. Nine people are still in hospital, four in a critical condition, it said.

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All those listed as missing have now been accounted for, but Stefano Zanut, a fire brigade official, told Sky TG24: “Our work continues in order to have the full certainty that nobody has been left under the rubble.”

He said workers were also making the site secure and helping investigations to establish the cause of the disaster.

The viaduct was part of the A10 motorway that links Genoa with the French border to the west and was managed by toll-road operator Autostrade per l’Italia, a unit of the infrastructure group Atlantia.

Autostrade pledged €500m (£449) on Saturday to rebuild the bridge and set up funds to immediately assist the families of the victims and those displaced from their homes by the collapse and reconstruction work.

The government launched a procedure to revoke concessions held by Autostrade to operate toll highways on Friday. It will also launch a plan next month to make Italy’s infrastructure safe, Giancarlo Giorgetti, the undersecretary in the prime minister’s office, said in a newspaper interview.

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“It will be a maintenance operation with no precedents, with enormous investment in public works”, including not only motorways, bridges and viaducts but also public buildings such as schools, he told Il Messaggero.

Giorgetti did not specify the cost of the plan, but said: “Deficit, GDP or European rules do not exist” and that the EU “will be benevolent”.

The European commission limits the budget deficit of EU member states to 3% of GDP.

The government is due to update its economic targets in September before drawing up the 2019 budget, and investors are concerned that its spending plans might ignore EU fiscal rules and push up the country’s debt, the highest in the eurozone after Greece.

Asked whether the government would halt the procedure against Autostrade if investigators found the group had no responsibility for the bridge collapse, Giorgetti did not answer.