Four in Critical Condition after Paris Building Blast

By Staff, Agencies

An explosion potentially caused by a gas leak ripped through a building in central Paris on Wednesday, leaving four people fighting for their lives and causing a wave of destruction, officials said.

Rescue workers were in the evening still searching the rubble for two missing individuals who had not been accounted for, according to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

He told reporters at the scene that four seriously injured victims were in a life-threatening condition, while 33 others had sustained lesser injuries.

The blast was followed by a major fire which caused the building, housing a fashion school, to collapse in a historic district of the French capital.

Images showed wreckage littering the area around the building, as the flames smoldered.

Some 70 fire trucks and 270 firefighters battled the blaze. Nine doctors were also at the scene.

The fire service had said there had been "an explosion" which had "caused the collapse of two buildings", but police later said only one building had collapsed.

Several witnesses told AFP at the scene they had heard "a giant explosion".

Windows as far as 400 meters [440 yards away were shattered, AFP reporters said.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo assembled a crisis unit and wrote on Twitter: "My thoughts go first and foremost to the victims and their loved ones."

The "violent" fire which broke out after the explosion has now been "contained", Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said at the scene, adding that "work is still taking place under the rubble" to find any more possible victims.

The firefighters "prevented the spread of the fire to two adjoining buildings which were seriously destabilized by the explosion" and "were evacuated", Nunez added.

The blast was caused by a "gas explosion", the district's mayor said on Twitter, although this was not confirmed by other officials.

Florence Berthout, mayor of the 5^th district in central Paris, said the main building affected is a private fashion school – called Paris American Academy – adjoining the former Val-de-Grace military hospital.

According to the mayor, the noise of the "quite enormous" explosion spread "in part of the district".

An investigation into the causes of the blast was launched immediately, prosecutors said.