Dozens of people were injured in an explosion at an apartment block in western Germany, according to reports on Sunday.
Police said the explosion took place at a building in Wuppertal, injuring 25 people, including four seriously, it was reported. The explosion destroyed the top three floors of the building.
According to a statement from German police, five people remained hospitalized, including three with serious injuries. “Currently no other persons are missing,” police said in a statement.
A fire then broke out in several parts of the apartment building, and firefighters had trouble dousing the flames because portions of the building kept collapsing. Four severely injured people were rescued from inside the structure before they were sent to the hospital, according to the Guardian.
Police said they’re not sure of the cause of the explosion.
“The work is made more difficult by the fact that the building is currently in acute danger of collapse,” said a police spokesman explaining the situation, according to The Independent. “How this came to pass and what the background is, that remains completely unclear.”
Search-and-rescue dogs were sent to the scene to look for potential survivors, said police.
On Sunday, the fire department confirmed that everyone inside the building had been rescued. “Now that human rescue has been completed, we’re trying to keep the situation around the building stable,” said a fire department spokesman, as reported by the Independent.
