Five firefighters killed battling blaze

Five firefighters were killed on Saturday in two successive explosions at a building outside Paris as they tried to put out a blaze.

After evacuating residents, the firefighters used a ladder to reach the sixth floor of the residential building in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just north of Paris, when an explosion severely injured two of them, the Paris firefighters’ office said.

Moments later, three other firefighters were badly injured in a second explosion as they rushed to rescue their stricken colleagues.

All five were taken in a critical condition to a nearby hospital, where they died of their injuries.

President Jacques Chirac paid tribute to the "extraordinary courage" of these men "who died in their youth while saving other lives - men and woman threatened by flames, and those of their own colleagues," his office said in a statement.

The cause of the explosions was not immediately known, but authorities suspect a gas leak.

"For us, it’s a very difficult event to live through. We have difficulty in speaking calmly about the emotions we feel," a firefighter chief, Christian de Colloredo, told France-Info radio.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a former mayor of Neuilly, visited the scene of the accident to lend his support.