Around 10 people were injured in an explosion in a chemical park in western Germany on Wednesday afternoon, local police said.

A tank sit outdoors in a chemical park in Krefeld, a western German city near Duesseldorf, exploded at around 14:00 (1200 GMT) on Wednesday and caused a nearby building to collapse, the city's police spokesman Acor Kniely told Xinhua by telephone.

Around 10 people were injured, he said. Rescue forces had arrived at the scene. The cause of the explosion remained unclear.