The Times reports witness, Nathan Gomot, a waiter at a nearby cocktail bar saying: “It was an ordinary day. We were preparing for the [national] music festival this evening when we felt an enormous explosion. We looked out and saw debris all over the place. The façade of the building had fallen into the street and the block of flats opposite had also caught fire.”

He added that the design school was frequented by “Americans who come to learn about French fashion. We often serve them in this bar. When I see the state of the building, it is worrying.”

The blast occurred at 4.55pm local time, just as workers were heading home. The area is frequented by tourists and foreign students in the early summer but there was no immediate indication that foreigners were among the missing or wounded.

Several nearby buildings were evacuated. More than two hours after the explosion, first aiders were still treating residents for shock. One woman fainted in the street.

Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said early indications were that the blast originated inside the building. Investigators would look into whether building conditions were in breach of regulations or if an individual had acted without due care.

More than 200 firefighters were involved in the emergency response. TV images showed firefighters manning hoses and aiming jets of water at the blaze while a plume of thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said later that the blaze had been brought under control.

The Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, is at the scene and the area has been cordoned off.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has warned people to avoid the area.

The neighbourhood in which the explosion occurred runs south from the Latin Quarter in Paris’s Left Bank. It is popular with tourists and is known for its student population.

Local deputy mayor, Edouard Civel, referred to a gas explosion in a Twitter post and witnesses told BFM TV there had been a strong smell of gas moments before the blast.

“The shop shook violently, it felt like bomb blast,” said Rahman Oliur who manages a food shop a few doors down the street from the Paris American Academy believed to have been at the centre of the explosion.

Bar worker Khal Ilsey said he heard a “huge explosion” before running outside and seeing a violent blaze at the end of the street.

A blast ripped through a street in the busy Latin Quarter of central Paris on Wednesday, injuring about 30 people, starting fires, and collapsing the facade of a building housing a design school popular with foreign students.

Rescue workers were searching for two missing people feared buried under rubble, authorities said.

Witnesses described a deafening explosion and a giant fireball that rose several stories high on the Rue Saint-Jacques, in the 5th arrondissement not far from the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral and Luxembourg Gardens.

Rubble from the building in which the Paris American Academy is located lay strewn across the street.

At least 29 people were injured, including four who are in critical condition, police said.

Soldiers helped secure a safety perimeter around the scene.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was too early to say what caused the blast.

“The explosion was extremely violent,” Florence Berthout, mayor for the fifth district of the city, where the explosion happened.

She said four people were in “absolute emergency” condition and described pieces of glass still falling from buildings close to where it happened in the Rue Saint-Jacques.

As many as 24 people have been injured according to reports.

Art historian Monique Mosser said: “I thought it was a bomb.” Many of the windows in her building had been blown out by the blast’s shockwave, she said.

“A neighbour knocked on the door and told me that the fire brigade were asking us to evacuate as quickly as possible. I grabbed my laptop, my phone. I didn’t even think to take get my medication.”

There are multiple reports that the building at the centre of the explosion was the Paris American Academy design school, which is popular with foreign students.

The BBC reports that the blast took place in a building that housed a design school and the Catholic education system headquarters, which was next to the Val de Grâce church.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that initial checks of security camera footage suggested the explosion occurred within the building.

Witnesses say there was a strong smell of gas before the blast, though this has not yet been confirmed by authorities.