A blast ripped through a street in the busy Latin Quarter of central Paris on Wednesday, causing the facade of a design school popular with foreign students to collapse, blowing out windows and starting a huge blaze.
At least 16 people were injured, including seven who are in a critical condition.
The Paris prosecutor's office said it was too early to say what caused the blast.
But the local deputy mayor, Edouard Civel, referred to a gas explosion in a Twitter post and witnesses told BFM TV there had been a strong smell of gas moments before the blast.
Television images showed rubble from the Paris American Academy strewn across the Rue Saint-Jacques and smoke rising from at least two nearby buildings that were ablaze.
More than 200 firefighters were involved in the emergency response. Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said later that the blaze had been brought under control.
Rue Saint-Jacques in the 5th arrondissement of central Paris leads from the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral to the Sorbonne University and the Val de Grace military hospital and is a few blocks from the popular Jardin du Luxembourg.
The area is usually packed with tourists and foreign students in the early summer.
Israel pounded Rafah with airstrikes and tank fire on Tuesday, pressing its offensive in Gaza's southern city despite international condemnation of an attack that sparked a blaze in a tent camp for the displaced, killing at least 45 people.
Around one million people have fled the Gazan city of Rafah in the past three weeks, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Tuesday.
Torrential rains brought by cyclone Remal caused a collapse in a stone quarry in India's state of Mizoram, killing 15 people and trapping seven, while eight more have died in landslides and other accidents elsewhere in the remote region.
North Korea said its attempt to launch a new military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure on Monday when a newly developed rocket engine exploded in flight.
More than 2,000 people could be buried alive by a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea last week, the government said on Monday, as treacherous terrain and the difficulty of getting aid to the site raises the risk few survivors will be found.
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