At least 7 people are reported to have been killed in Pyréneés-Orientales, which is in the Southern part of France on Monday morning.
According to the report by AFP, the loud explosion in Pyréneés-Orientales, the incident happened around 1:30 a.m. in one of the main arteries of the town located about fifteen kilometres from Perpignan, causing a fire in small two-storey buildings on either side of the street.
The sad incident as reported by AFP in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque (Pyrénées-Orientales), also saw two children among the dead.
The report also stated that the Gérald Darmanin went there this Monday afternoon at the request of Emmanuel Macron and Jean Castex.
The Minister of the Interior confirmed the total number of death, but stated that investigations are still ongoing to ascertain the cause of the explosion and fire. He stated that among the injured, one person was seriously burned and transported to a specialized centre. Another person is still missing.
In the morning, the emergency services discovered five dead bodies in the rubble of these buildings, the ground floors of which were occupied by a grocery store and a fast-food stand.
A missing person
An investigation has been opened to determine the causes of the explosion, said the prosecution, while the public prosecutor Jean-David Cavaillé also spoke at midday to give more details on the circumstances of the tragedy. , during a press briefing.
Among the elements to check the presence of gas cylinders in the shops on the ground floor. A track was mentioned by the public prosecutor.
“The presence of gas cylinders seems to be confirmed, but we will give investigators time to check the contents of the shops,” he explained.
Later in the afternoon, Colonel Alexandre Trani, head of the SDIS Pyrénées-Orientales operations group, also clarified that there was still a missing person.
“We went from a rescue operation to a search operation,” he explained, adding that the presence of the missing person in the rubble remained “to be confirmed” but that there was a “high probability”.
Investigations in one of the buildings are also made very complicated by the unstable nature of the building.