Prosecutor Dominique Laurens said an investigation was opened on that basis after the first body was found in the building, which collapsed in a fiery explosion early Sunday.
Four of the six victims have been formally identified, Laurens said: a 74-year-old couple and two women, ages 88 and 65, who were neighbors.
Rescuers continuing searching Tuesday for two people who remained unaccounted for following the emergency in France’s second-largest city.
Investigators “are now working on the hypothesis of a gas explosion” as the cause of the building’s collapse, Laurens said during a Tuesday news conference. A gas meter was found in the rubble that may help determine whether there was atypical consumption in the 24 hours prior to the explosion.
In 2018, two buildings in the center of Marseille collapsed, killing eight people. Those buildings were poorly maintained, which was not the case with the one that collapsed Sunday, the interior minister said.As many as 20 people were thought to be under the rubble after an explosion that caused two residential buildings to collapse in the southern French city of Marseille on Sunday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
The cause of the explosion was not yet known.
The collapse caused a fire that complicated rescue efforts and that Darmanin said could take hours to put out. He said authorities estimated there were between four and 10 people under the rubble.
Five people were taken to hospital with serious but not life threatening injuries and a sixth person was being treated for shock, he added.
A third building has partially collapsed and people have been evacuated from some 30 buildings in the area.
The buildings that collapsed on the Rue de Tivoli were not known to have any structural problems, Darmanin said.
"Thoughts are with Marseille," President Emmanuel Macron said in a Twitter message.
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