Deadly Blast Guts Building in French City Francois Nascimbeni/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Fire fighters worked near the collapsed section of an apartment building in Reims, France, on Sunday. REIMS, France - An explosion, possibly caused by a gas leak, ripped off the side of a five-story residential building in France's Champagne country on Sunday, killing at least 3 people and injuring 14 others, officials said. More than 100 rescue workers were sent to the gutted building in a subsidized housing complex in the city of Reims, east of Paris, officials said. Heaps of debris spilled out of the building onto a grassy esplanade below. "The explosion of a residential building in Reims is a terrible drama," the office of President François Hollande said in a statement, conveying his condolences to the victims" relatives. Michel Bernard, the top government official in Reims, said crews searching for survivors found the body of a woman Sunday afternoon, raising the death toll to three. He said it was unlikely the toll would rise. One person was hospitalized with serious, but not life-threatening injuries, and 13 people had minor injuries, officials said. Rescuers used backhoes to help clear the rubble. "We don't know the cause of the explosion," said the mayor of Reims, Adeline Hazan. It was probably due to gas. An official investigation was under way to determine the cause, she said. The authorities say the three people known to have died were adults. Witnesses described a powerful blast. "The explosion was very strong, like a sonic boom from a fighter plane," said a housing project resident, Abdel Kader. The building fell "like a house of cards," he said. Mr. Bernard, the government official in Reims, said the building dated to the 1960s. The precariousness of some buildings has come to light internationally in recent days after the collapse Wednesday of an eight-story building outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which more than 350 people have been confirmed dead. Officials said that three floors of the building, which had housed garment factories, had been built illegally.