National

Five injured after explosion at Paris residential building

Aug 06, 2023

Paris [France], August 6: Five people were injured after an explosion in a residential building in Paris, according to Le Figaro newspaper on Saturday.
One of them was seriously injured, the report said.
The incident occurred on the top floor of a multi-storey building in the Montmartre district of Paris at around 2:30pm (1230 GMT)), the newspaper reported, citing police sources.
The five injured were taken to hospital and the building's other inhabitants were evacuated.
A video shows a façade in the Rue du Nord in the 18th arrondissement partially blown away by the explosion.
Around 100 firefighters were deployed to the scene.
It remains unclear what caused the incident.
Saturday's blast in the 18th Arrondissement was less powerful and was not followed by a fire, but still shattered the windows of the building, whose facade had recently been renovated, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the source of the explosion, which was thought to be an accident.
A waiter at the nearby Fulano restaurant told AFP there had been "a big bang and a cloud of dust that filled the entire street".
In January 2019, four people, two of them firefighters, died and 66 were injured when an explosion caused by a gas leak destroyed a building near the centre of Paris.
Source: Qatar Tribune