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Children among 10 killed in fire
TEN people, including five children, died after a fire ravaged an eight- storey apartment building in one of Lyon’s poorest suburbs, French authorities said. The cause of the blaze, France’s deadliest residential fire in years, is the subject of an investigation, including to establish whether it had a criminal origin.
Witness reports carried on French media described scenes of horror, including residents smashing windows to try to climb out of the building and a mother throwing her child out of a window to be safely caught by a person on the ground.
French interior minister Gerald Darmanin arrived quickly at the scene in the small suburban town of Vaulx- en- Velin, 290 miles south- east of Paris. He praised the 170 firefighters who mobilised after flames tore through the centre of the modern apartment block.
They intervened “within 12 minutes at 3am and were able to save 15 people by taking considerable risks for their own lives,” he said.
Despite the rapid response, a further 14 people were injured, four of them seriously, according to the prefecture for the Rhone region.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw several fire engines and a security perimeter set up around the area, and residents and traumatised neighbours with their children assembling in a car park opposite the building.
The five children who died were between the ages of three and 15.
Counselling centres were set up at two schools that authorities think will be the most impacted. Lyon academy rector Olivier Dugrip said students from the schools were among the victims.
Authorities said that they have started working on plans to relocate an estimated 88 displaced residents.
“Families are living a deep tragedy, on a scale we have never known,” Vaulx- en- Velin mayor Helene Geoffroy said. Her small town of 43,000 inhabitants is among the most impoverished areas in the Rhone region.
Messages of support were sent from far and wide.