by proldic » Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:26 pm
Reuters Sun Sep 4, 2005 12:32 PM BST <br><br>14 killed in third big Paris fire, arson feared<br><br>By Laure Bretton<br><br>PARIS (Reuters) - A fire killed 14 people in a suspected arson attack in a high-rise apartment block in Paris on Sunday, the third major blaze in the French capital in just over a week, police said.<br><br>Two children were among the victims, most of whom were killed by smoke and fumes, and at least 13 people were hurt in the low-cost 18-storey building in the southern suburbs of the capital, a police spokesman said.<br><br>"The official toll is 14 dead but the toll is unfortunately going to rise," he said.<br><br>Local officials said they suspected the fire was started deliberately in a letter box in the entrance of the building, and were looking for four young people whom witnesses saw in the hallway just before the blaze started.<br><br>"The first indications point to a fire caused by a criminal act," said Patrick Seve, Mayor of the L'Hay-les-Roses district where the fire broke out around 1 a.m. (12 a.m. British time).<br><br>Many victims were choked or suffocated by the fumes in extremely high temperatures after opening their doors. People who stayed in their apartments were safe.<br><br>"The people who stayed inside were fine. It's the people who rushed out and ran into temperatures of 300 degrees Celsius (572 Fahrenheit), smoke and asphyxia, that gave rise to the terrible toll," said deputy fire chief Alain Antonini.<br><br>Unlike the two other fires in the past 10 days, Sunday's blaze did not sweep through rundown housing for immigrants but was in a low cost social apartment block... <br><br>The fire followed a blaze which killed seven people in a rundown building housing immigrants last week and a fire which killed 17 African immigrants three days earlier.<br><br>Twenty-four people were killed in a fire in another rundown building housing immigrants in April.<br><br>The fires have raised questions over safety and the treatment of immigrants, and President Jacques Chirac has demanded action to prevent further such tragedies.<br><br>French police evicted dozens of squatters from two rundown buildings in Paris on Friday, acting on a government pledge to close unsafe apartments after the recent fires.<br><br>The French capital has about 60 unsafe squats and more than 10,000 flats in the greater Paris region are considered unhygienic, officials say.<br><br>In the greater Paris region, some 300,000 families, many of them immigrants, are waiting to be allocated permanent social housing. Many live in tiny temporary homes for years.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-09-04T113240Z_01_HO417042_RTRUKOC_0_UK-FRANCE-FIRE.xml">today.reuters.co.uk/news/...E-FIRE.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
