Interior minister heads to scene of tragedy near Perpignan as search of gutted buildings continues At least seven people, including two children, have died after an explosion sent fire raging through a building in southern France One of the victims of the blaze that started in a three-story building in the coastal town of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque who was on an official visit to police in Montpellier was expected at the scene on Monday afternoon He confirmed the provisional death toll of seven people including two children but added: “Unfortunately the work of the firefighters and other services is not finished so this may not be definite.” sent his condolences to the victims’ families and friends and praised the work of the emergency services who he said were working “in difficult circumstances” The explosion happened around 1.30am local time and was believed to have occurred on the ground floor which housed a grocery store and a fast-food take-away Flames quickly engulfed the building and two neighbouring properties Firefighters have searched two of the buildings but said the third remained too dangerous to enter said the emergency services were still searching for a family thought to be in the building but who may have been absent The search was being hampered because temperatures in the buildings remained high and several floors had collapsed adding that the death toll may rise further Cavaillé said an investigation into the cause of the explosion had been opened but it was too early to establish whether it was accidental or criminal One man who jumped from the second floor to escape the flames was said to be in a critical condition in hospital Just under 100 firefighters were called to the scene in the early hours of Monday A resident of a neighbouring building who was woken by the explosion said it was “a horror scene … it was extraordinarily violent” This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.