GAS EXPLOSION ROCKS PARIS APARTMENT BUILDING

A huge explosion ripped through a building in the middle of Paris. Visuals showed smoke rising out of a building in the centre of the city.
Reports quoted the police as saying the explosion may have been caused by a gas leak. "Explosion in central Paris not terror related, appears to have been a gas explosion," a police officer was quoted as saying. (ND TV)

An explosion destroyed several floors of an apartment building on Rue Bérite in the sixth arrondissement of Paris at around 12.20pm on Friday. Five people were left with minor injuries after the explosion, but it remains unclear whether anyone was in the flats at the time of the blast. "Firefighters had been there for an hour trying to put a blaze on the ground floor of a neighbouring building, then there was an almighty explosion that shook the whole area," one witness told Le Parisian. "It's terrible I saw several firefighters taken away on stretchers," he said. Jenna Binion, who lives nearby, told The Local: "I felt my floor shake and heard a loud noise, then it smelled like smoke outside." "There are a lot of people in the streets and I can hear a lot of sirens."