Silvano Ippolito, who lives opposite the building where the explosion happened, said he heard the blast and then saw a young boy lying on the ground being helped by bystanders.
He called his wife, a doctor, who gave first aid to the critically wounded woman. “She intervened very quickly, before the emergency services arrived, to apply tourniquets and perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, as the woman was losing consciousness,” Ippolito told The Associated Press.
He said a man then emerged from the building covered in blood and staggering. As he tried to make his way down the stairs, the staircase collapsed, causing him to fall onto Ippolito’s wife and a firefighter.
The woman’s injuries were “a real disaster”, Ippolito said. “I’m telling you, she had no foot.”