Gas explosion rocks central Paris shopping district, 12 injured

[January 12, 2019]  PARIS (Reuters) - A huge explosion probably caused by a gas leak gutted the ground floor of a building in a central Paris shopping district on Saturday, seriously injuring at least 12 people, authorities said.

Police were on high alert in the French capital for a ninth consecutive Saturday of "yellow vest" protests, with large parts of the city center blocked off by riot police.

In recent years France has suffered jihadist militant attacks in Paris, Nice, Marseille and beyond. But the Paris prosecutor Remi Heitz was quick to rule out foul play.

"We still need to determine the circumstances and cause of the explosion but at this stage we can say it is clearly an accident, presumably a gas leak," he told reporters.

A police source said the explosion tore apart a bakery on the rue Trevise in the Grands Boulevards district. The force of the blast shattered nearby storefronts and rocked buildings hundreds of meters away, witnesses said.

Fire brigade commander Eric Moulin told reporters that 12 people, including three firefighters, were seriously injured. Five of them, including two firemen, had life-threatening injuries, he said.

At least 24 more people had lighter injuries, Moulin said. Firefighters were searching the building for more casualties.

More than 200 firefighters joined the rescue operation and two helicopters landed on the nearby Place de l'Opera to evacuate victims.

Firemen evacuate a woman from the site of an explosion in a bakery shop in the 9th District in Paris, France, January 12, 2019 REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

"The situation is now under control," Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told reporters on the scene.

An eyewitness at a hotel nearby said he saw a huge fire erupt in the building blown out by the blast.

"There was broken glass everywhere, storefronts were blown out and windows were shattered up to the third and fourth floors," said 38-year-old David Bangura.

He said that as he approached the scene, a woman was crying for help from the first floor of a building: "Help us, help us, we have a child".

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq, Caroline Paillez, Emmanuel Jarry, Simon Carraud, Lucien Libert, Christian Hartmann and Benoit Tessier; Editing by Mark Heinrich/Ros Russell)

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