|
|
The
accident occurred with Paris under security lockdown for a ninth consecutive
Saturday of "yellow vest" protests, with large parts of the French
capital blocked off by riot police.
"As
firemen were looking for a gas leak in the building, a dramatic explosion
took place," Interior Minister Christophe castaner said, adding that one
of the firemen had been buried under debris for several hours.
castaner
said on his Twitter feed that two firefighters had died, and that 10 people,
including one firefighter, had serious injuries. Another 37 people had
lighter injuries, he said. Earlier he had told reporters that two civilians
had also died.
Just hours
after the blast, thousands of yellow vest protesters marched noisily but
peacefully through the Grands Boulevards shopping district of northern Paris,
just a few hundred metres (yards) from the scene of the explosion.
In recent
years, France has suffered a string of deadly Islamist militant attacks in
Paris, Nice, Marseille and elsewhere but authorities quickly ruled out foul
play.
"A
this stage we can say it (the gas blast) is clearly an accident," Paris
prosecutor Remi Heitz told reporters.
A police
source said the explosion tore apart a bakery on the rue Trevise and
witnesses said the force of the blast shattered nearby storefronts and rocked
buildings hundreds of metres away.
More than
200 firefighters joined the rescue operation and two helicopters landed on
the nearby Place de l'Opera to evacuate victims. Ambulances struggled to
access the blast area because of police barriers set up to contain any
violence by yellow vest protesters.
An
eyewitness at a hotel nearby said he saw flames envelop the ground floor of
the building blown out by the blast.
"There
was broken glass everywhere, storefronts were blown out and windows were
shattered up to the third and fourth floors," said 38-year-old David
Bangura.
He said
that as he approached the scene, a woman was crying for help from the first
floor of a building: "Help us, help us, we have a child".
|
Source: NDO