Eight dead in Berlin fire

2005-08-09 11:23

Berlin - Eight people, four of them children, were killed in a fire suspected to have been caused by arson in an apartment building in Berlin, authorities said on Tuesday.

Rescue operations were complicated by the fact that most of the residents spoke Arabic and little German and were unable to understand instructions from firefighters.

As terrified tenants fled their apartments they became trapped in the stairwell, where authorities believe the fire started.

Eight other people were injured, six of them seriously, in one of the most deadly fires in the city since World War 2, the head of Berlin's fire services, Albrecht Broemme, said.

A further 43 people in the building were treated at the scene for minor cases of smoke inhalation.

"In the beginning the fire seemed fairly harmless," Broemme said.

Disaster

"But some residents headed straight into disaster. Running for the stairwell was a run toward death."

Broemme said he was certain that most could have survived if they had stayed in their apartments, which showed only minor smoke damage after the blaze was extinguished.

Firefighters said the flames spread more quickly as many residents opened their doors to rush into the corridor.

The fire began at around 11:00 pm on Monday in a baby carriage on the ground floor of the five-storey building in the city's culturally diverse Moabit district, and then spread through the building floor-by-floor.

"We believe that it is of criminal origin," a police spokesperson said.

Around 150 firefighters, 25 emergency vehicles and seven doctors were at the scene.

Authorities were unable to immediately provide details on the identities or ages of the victims.

Broemme said the fire was the worst since 1989, when a hotel on the chic Kurfuerstendamm boulevard went up in flames, killing eight.

- AFP