Two buildings in Istanbul’s Fatih district came down on Sunday afternoon after a natural gas explosion, and one person was killed, the Istanbul Governor’s office said.
Governor Davut Gul went to the site and then checked on survivors at the hospital. In the statement from his office, rescue personnel had pulled out 10 injured people, all hospitalized, one of them in critical condition. Other accounts of the rescue differed. Livemint, citing the state broadcaster TRT, reported that seven people had been recovered at first and an eighth later, with crews still searching for a last person and none of the survivors in critical condition.
Gul said early assessments pointed to natural gas as the cause. According to Turkiye Today, he explained that the explosion happened in one building and that its collapse brought down the one next door. One of the two buildings had two stories. The other had one.
Teams from the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, known as AFAD, arrived with the fire brigade and medical crews, and a search and rescue operation began at once.
An old part of the city
Fatih has long been counted among the districts of Istanbul most at risk when it comes to building safety, Turkiye Today reported. Much of its housing was built decades ago, before modern seismic standards existed. The streets are tightly packed, and ground conditions add to the strain. A large share of the buildings has yet to be renewed under the city’s urban transformation programs.
Research by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality found that Fatih has one of the oldest housing stocks in the city, with 39,786 units considered vulnerable. In 2025, an abandoned three-story building in the area collapsed after an earthquake. Nobody was hurt.
No cause beyond the governor’s early assessment has been announced.
Sources
- 1 dead in Istanbul after gas explosion collapses 2 buildings
- One dead after two buildings collapsed in Turkey's Istanbul after gas explosion, rescue personnel pulled out 10 people | Today News
