Nine die in flats blaze in Germany

A fire in a block of flats in Germany killed at least nine people, five of them children, police said today.

Police found eight bodies in the building in the city of Ludwigshafen and one woman died in a hospital after the fire yesterday, police spokeswoman Simone Eisenbarth said. Twenty-two people remained in hospital today.

“Unfortunately, we cannot exclude further victims,” Ms Eisenbarth said. Investigators were not immediately able to enter parts of the smouldering building because the structure, much of it made of wood, was in danger of collapsing.

The cause of the fire, which started yesterday afternoon, was not clear and the victims had not yet been identified, Ms Eisenbarth said.

Police said 24 people – all of them Turkish citizens – were registered as living in the four-storey building, but that more people had been in the house because of carnival celebrations.

Police said the house’s old wooden staircase swiftly collapsed after the fire broke out; and that, in some cases, residents threw their children to police officers before jumping out of the building themselves.