Paris: Four people were seriously injured in a blast that tore through a building in central Paris on Wednesday, and French rescuers combed the debris on Thursday in search of a missing person.

On Saint-Jacques Street in the 5th district, near the Luxembourg Gardens and the Latin Quarter, a popular tourist destination in the French capital, an explosion tore through a building on Wednesday afternoon. According to police, the explosion left four people with serious injuries and 33 others with less serious wounds.

The number of people still missing has decreased from two on Thursday morning to one, according to police, who said the search was still ongoing.

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Up to 400 yards away, windows were blown out by the explosion, which was followed by a large fire that led to the collapse of the structure housing the fashion school.

Before the fire could be put out, 270 firefighters and 70 fire trucks battled it.

The security perimeter had been loosened early on Thursday, allowing reporters and onlookers to get closer to the pile of rubble in front of the building.
While some of the shops on the blast-damaged street had reopened, a single fire hose was occasionally still spraying water on the building's ruins.

The collapse was caused by a gas explosion, according to the mayor of the 5th district, but other officials have not yet confirmed this.

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Although some witnesses interviewed by AFP claimed to have smelled gas in the street prior to the explosion, authorities said they lacked sufficient proof to pinpoint the exact cause of the explosion.

Prosecutors claimed that an investigation into the causes was started right away. In the French capital, there have been a number of gas-related explosion incidents. Four people, including two firefighters, were killed when a building on the Rue de Trevise in the ninth district was destroyed in January 2019 due to a suspected leak in a buried gas pipe.

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Numerous nearby windows were blown out by the shockwave, and dozens of families were compelled to flee their homes for several months.
Four years after the disaster, a significant portion of the street is still off-limits.