Silhouettes in Madrid inferno

2005-02-19 18:54

Madrid - Spanish police are investigating what appear to be two mysterious silhouettes on an amateur videotape taken last weekend while a fire raged inside a Madrid skyscraper.

On the tape, which was aired by Spanish television stations on Friday night, two figures in silhouette are seen inside the blazing Windsor Tower more than two hours after the building was supposedly evacuated.

The figures appear to be moving about eight floors below the core of the gigantic fire, according to Carlos Just, a lawyer who took the amateur video from a building about 200m away from the tower at around 3:00 am (02:00 GMT) last Sunday.

Just called the emergency services who said at first that the figures were firefighters. But an evacuation of the fire crews had been ordered earlier for fear that the building might collapse,

Madrid's mayor has called for an investigation to find out if anyone was inside the 106m building when the fire broke out. No dead or missing have been reported.

Officials last week said they believed the office tower was vacant as it was a weekend night. Some speculated that the silhouettes could have been an optical illusion.

- AFP