The Italian authorities proceeded today to evict an occupied building in the city of Florence (north) where the 5-year-old Peruvian girl who disappeared a week ago resides.

The Prosecutor’s Office has ordered the eviction of this building, the old Hotel Astor, in which a hundred people, families of Peruvian and Romanian origin, have lived illegally since last September.

A large police device has been deployed in the place and the surrounding streets have been closed to traffic, according to the media.

The objective is to look for clues that help to find the whereabouts of the girl, Kataleya Álvarez, who disappeared last Saturday.

In recent days, the Italian authorities have expanded the investigation area to the province of Bologna (central-north) after a person reported that they had seen the little girl traveling by bus in the company of a woman.

The Bologna Prosecutor’s Office activated the search plan for missing persons after receiving this complaint from a “reliable informant” who claimed to have seen the girl.

The prosecutors in charge of the investigations, including one belonging to the Anti-mafia directorate, are considering the crime of kidnapping for extortion as a hypothesis, as they suspect that it is related to the blackmail of renting beds in the occupied building where he lives.

Kataleya Álvarez disappeared on Saturday around 1:00 p.m. (11:00 GMT) when she was playing in the patio of the building where she lives after having a fight with some children.

The alarm was raised by her own mother when, after returning from work, she did not find the little girl at home and reported her disappearance to the police.

The Latin American community in Florence quickly turned to the search, spreading numerous appeals on social networks and WhatsApp groups asking for collaboration to search for the missing woman in the streets of the neighborhood where she lives, in the Novoli district.

The girl’s mother had to be treated by the emergency service of a Florentine hospital since she ingested a small amount of bleach after passing through the Italian Prosecutor’s Office, where she testified about the disappearance.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project