French seek survivors of big explosion

TOULOUSE, France -- Rescue workers with search dogs scoured the ruins of a chemical fertilizer plant Saturday, looking for survivors of an explosion that toppled houses, killed 29 people and left at least 650 in the hospital.

With many houses damaged or destroyed for nearly a 1 1/2-mile radius around the leveled AZF chemical plant after Friday's apparently accidental blast, some 150 families were moving into gymnasiums-turned-shelters or homes volunteered by other residents.

"We're salvaging what we can, this house is wrecked. We're going to have to raze it with a bulldozer, there's no way we're going to be able to live here again," said Gilles Bosc, 40, whose home is about 200 yards from the plant.

The death toll rose to 29, according to regional Prefect Hubert Fournier. At least 650 people were hospitalized with injuries -- including about 30 whom Toulouse Mayor Philippe Douste-Blazy described as "between life and death."

An unknown number of people were still missing by late afternoon Saturday, presumably buried amid tons of rubble by the explosion, which experts said had the strength of a 3.2 magnitude earthquake.

Rescue workers used search dogs to sniff through the debris for survivors. Much of the plant just outside Toulouse was in ruins, with only jagged, dust-covered beams still standing in some places. The blast carved a 150-foot-wide crater into the ground.

The force of the blast ripped walls and roofs off nearby homes, blew cars off the road and left a brown, acrid haze hanging over this city of nearly a million people and home to the country's aeronautics industry.

The cause remained unclear, but officials increasingly talked of an industrial accident.