Genoa: Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday that “around 30” people had been killed after a motorway bridge collapsed in the northwestern port city of Genoa.

“Unfortunately there are around 30 dead and many injured in a serious condition,” Salvini told reporters in the Sicilian city of Catania.

Rescuers scouring through the wreckage, strewn among shrubland and train tracks, said there were “dozens” of victims, while images from the scene showed an entire carriageway plunged to the ground.

Cars and trucks were tangled in the rubble and nearby buildings damaged by vast chunks of concrete, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Angelo Borrelli, head of the Civil Protection service which manages disaster areas, told reporters in Rome that an additional 13 people had been injured.

Aerial footage showed more than 200 metres (650 feet) of the viaduct, known locally as the Morandi bridge, completely destroyed.

The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear, although weather services in the Liguria region where Genoa is situated had issued a storm warning Tuesday morning.