Six killed, dozens missing after explosion levels Paris apartment block

Six people were killed and 11 injured on Sunday when an explosion ripped through an apartment building outside Paris, reducing half a residential block to rubble, emergency services said. Emergency services were still searching for seven adults and five children as a state of red alert was declared. The blast happened in the early morning on Jean-Jaures Avenue at Rosny-sous-Bois, near the Paris Stock Exchange in an eastern suburb of the French capital. The cause of the explosion is not yet known.

We could still find living victims in the hours to come.

Gabriel Plus, fire department spokesman

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is at the scene but couldn’t confirm a theory that the explosion was caused by a gas leak. People living in the remaining two-thirds of the building have been given alternative lodging, he said. Speaking from La Rochelle Sunday at a Socialist Party conference, Prime Minister Manuel Valls began his speech by sending out a “message of solidarity” to the victims of the catastrophe.

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