Marseille, the second largest city in France, has been experiencing hours of anguish since an explosion early Sunday morning caused the collapse of a building in the city center.
The rescue teams have found the first six dead among the rubble on Monday.
At least two other people who lived at 17 Tivoli Street still do not show signs of life.
"There is hope," declared the mayor, Benoît Payan, "and as long as there is hope of finding survivors, we will not stop."
The causes of the explosion are unknown, the Marseille prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, reported on Sunday.
The building, with four floors and five apartments, lived elderly people and a couple in their thirties.
There were no minors.
The extreme difficulty of the rescue, among rubble that is difficult to access and with a fire caused by the explosion still active, has prolonged the uncertainty about the missing.
The collapse of 17 rue Tivoli has brought bad memories to Marseille.
On November 5, 2018, two buildings collapsed on Rue de Aubagne.
Eight people died.
That episode opened a debate about the terrible state of many buildings in the center of the Mediterranean city.
“It was a trauma, it marked a before and after,” the veteran sociologist Michel Peraldi commented some time later in Marseille.
“It revealed the pretty catastrophic state of the city center and the poverty.
And the negligence of the municipal government, the negligence”.
Mayor Payan has insisted that the collapse, this Sunday, of 17 rue Tivoli has nothing to do with that of rue d'Aubagne five years ago.
In the current case, the buildings were in good condition.
The explosion damaged the two neighboring buildings and a few hours later one of them, the one at number 15 on the same street, also collapsed.
About 200 people were evacuated.
The development of Marseille - a city of 850,000 inhabitants and a large Mediterranean port that lives in a permanent sensation of decline compared to the strength of other cities such as Bordeaux or Lyon - has become one of the priorities of his presidency for Macron.
In September 2021, he visited the city for three days, accompanied by several ministers, and announced a rain of millions to renovate a third of the schools and run-down homes and, among other projects, build a new police headquarters.
Despite the city's social and cultural dynamism, news about insecurity often makes Marseille-related headlines in the rest of France.
On the night of April 2-3, less than a week before the explosion on Tivoli Street, three young men were killed and 12 wounded in various shootings allegedly related to drug trafficking.
One of the dead was 16 years old.
So far this year, 13 people have been killed in gangland grudge settlers.
In all of 2022, 33 died.
General view of the rest of the building, this Monday in Marseille. FRANCK PENNANT (EL PAÍS)
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