PARIS: French rescuers scoured the rubble for a missing person on Thursday, a day after a blast ripped through a building in central Paris, leaving four seriously injured.
On Wednesday afternoon an explosion tore through a building on Saint-Jacques Street in the 5th district, close to the Luxembourg Gardens and at the edge of the Latin Quarter, a top tourism area in the French capital.
The blast left four people seriously injured, while 33 others sustained lesser injuries, according to police.
“The search is continuing,” police said on Thursday, saying rescuers were looking for one person still not accounted for – down from two earlier Thursday morning.
The blast blew out windows up to 400 meters (yards) away, and was followed by a major fire which caused the building, housing a fashion school, to collapse.
Some 70 fire trucks and 270 firefighters battled the blaze before it was contained.
Early Thursday, the security cordon had been reduced, allowing journalists and gawkers closer to the heap of rubble in front of the structure.
A single fire hose was still spraying the remains of the building now and then, while some shops had reopened on the street of the blast.
The mayor of the 5th district said a gas explosion was behind the collapse, but this has not yet been confirmed by other officials.
Some witnesses spoken to by AFP reported noticing a strong smell of gas in the street before the explosion, but officials said they did not have enough evidence to determine the cause of the blast with certainty.
An investigation into the causes was launched immediately, prosecutors said.
There have been several incidents of gas-related blasts in the French capital.
In January 2019, a suspected leak in a buried gas pipe destroyed a building on the Rue de Trevise in the ninth district, killing four people including two firefighters.
The shockwave blew out scores of nearby windows, and dozens of families were forced to evacuate their homes for months.
Much of the street still remains off limits four years after the disaster.
Rescuers comb through rubble of Paris building blast
https://arab.news/paphh
Rescuers comb through rubble of Paris building blast
- Explosion leaves four people seriously injured, while 33 others sustain lesser injuries
- Rescuers looking for one person still not accounted for, down from two earlier
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
