Five injured in Paris building blast

Five people were injured on Saturday in an explosion at a residential building in the north of Paris, police and emergency services said.

The blast recalled another in the French capital in June, when three people died in an explosion that caused a building to burst into flames and collapse in an area near the center of the city popular with tourists.

Saturday’s blast in the 18th Arrondissement was less powerful and was not followed by a fire, but still shattered the windows of the building, whose facade had recently been renovated, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.

The five injured were taken to hospital and the building’s other inhabitants were evacuated.

Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the source of the explosion, which was thought to be an accident.

A waiter at the nearby Fulano restaurant told AFP there had been “a big bang and a cloud of dust that filled the entire street”.

In January 2019, four people, two of them firefighters, died and 66 were injured when an explosion caused by a gas leak destroyed a building near the center of Paris.