Paris hotel fire kills at least 20

PEOPLE jumped from windows or screamed for rescue from flames as a pre-dawn fire roared through a Paris hotel used to house needy African families yesterday morning, killing at least 20 people, half of them children.

More than 50 people were injured, 11 seriously. The fire was thought to have started in a first-floor breakfast room of the one-star Paris Opera hotel in the capital’s 9th district, a popular tourist area, fire officials said.

Eight hours later, rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the scorched building.

Many guests were African. Paris City Hall had rented rooms in the six-storey hotel to temporarily house nine people from Africa, and state services housed 65 others without means, including some seeking asylum.

The fire broke out after 2am, when guests would have been sleeping. It spread quickly and caused panic, he said.

“One can imagine young children, parents without their clothes, in the middle of the night, fast asleep, smoke, cries, tears,” he said. French President Jacques Chirac said the fire was one of Paris’s “most painful catastrophes”.

The injured came from France, US, Portugal, Senegal, Tunisia, Ukraine and Ivory Coast, Paris.