Paris immigrant housing blaze leaves 17 dead

A FIRE at a crowded Paris apartment building housing African immigrants early yesterday killed 17 people - 14 of them children.

The blaze began after midnight under the ground-floor stairwell of the seven-storey building on the corner of a major boulevard in southeast Paris and raged for three hours, injuring 23 people, said prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin.

It was the second deadly blaze in four months at buildings housing immigrants. In April, a fire at a budget Paris hotel killed 24 people, also mostly African and many of them children.

The cause of the fire has not been determined, Mr Marin said, but he dismissed the possibility of a short-circuit. There is no proof of a criminal cause, he said.

The victims, some of whom reportedly jumped from windows, were mainly from the West African nation of Mali. Others were from Senegal, Ghana and Tunisia, residents said.

“It’s an extremely heavy toll,” said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who visited the scene, blaming the overcrowded conditions.

The children had been “asphyxiated”, he said. “It’s an abominable spectacle.”

Serge Blisko, mayor of the 13th district, said the victims had “visibly, died in their sleep, asphyxiated and not burned”.

One resident described being awakened by cries from children and adults, then rushing to his window on the second floor.

People “jumped out the windows. They didn’t care about dying”, said Oumar Cisse, 71, originally from Mali.

“This dreadful catastrophe plunges all of France into mourning,” said a statement from President Jacques Chirac. He asked that the cause of the blaze be determined as quickly as possible so that “all the consequences can be drawn”.

The fire burned through the upper floors and it took about 210 firefighters 90 minutes to bring it under control, said Capt Jacques Dauvergne, spokesman for the firefighters.

The building, near Place d’Italie, was requisitioned by the state in 1991 to help house immigrants in a city with soaring rents. It was managed by France-Euro Habitat, a group that works with Emmaus, a worldwide humanitarian organisation.

About 100 children and 30 adults lived there.