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Immigrants Trapped in Apartments Blaze

Posted on: Saturday, 27 August 2005, 09:00 CDT

FIRE raced through a crowded Paris apartment building housing African immigrants yesterday, killing 17 people - 14 of them children, police said.

Many of the victims were from the west African nation of Mali. Others were from Senegal, Ghana and Tunisia, according to local residents.

"It's an extremely heavy toll," said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who visited the scene of the blaze in south-east Paris.

"We just saw the bodies of seven children who were asphyxiated.

It's an abominable spectacle," Sarkozy said.

The district mayor, Serge Blisko, said the dead had "visibly, died in their sleep, asphyxiated and not burned."

One resident of the seven-storey building, situated on the corner ofa major boulevard, described being awakened by cries from children and adults, then rushing to his window on the building's second floor.

People "jumped out the windows. They didn't care about dying," said 71-year-old Oumar Cisse, originally from Mali.

The fire broke out shortly after midnight in the stairwell of the building, said Capt. Jacques Dauvergne, spokesman for the firefighters. About 210 firefighters worked for an hour-and-a-half to bring the blaze under control. It was extinguished after burning through the upper floors of the building for three hours, Dauvergne said.

Police were investigating the cause, taking samples from the building for laboratory analysis, Dauvergne said. Portions of the facade of the large white building on a corner of a major boulevard in the city's 13th district were scorched from the smoke, but the building was intact. Window boxes with flowers abloom that fell from balconies were strewn on the pavement below.

About 100 children and 30 adults lived in the building, which was run by a humanitarian association that helps needy people, according to Cisse who has lived in the building for 15 years.

He said the building was in a decrepit state, infested with rats and mice. Blisko, the district mayor, said the building was "overcrowded," particularly with children.

"They talk about three-room apartments with 12 people," Blisko said in an interview. "When you have this type of fire and people are sleeping, you can be sure the toll will be high."

Sory Cassama, who lived in the building with his wife and 12 children, said he was asleep when a daughter knocked on the door. Their living room had filled with smoke.

"There was so much smoke in the stairwell, but we were still able to get out," said Cassama, who said his wife was in hospital with smoke inhalation.

It was the second major Paris fire this year. In April, 24 people were killed in a hotel blaze in the French capital - many of them children and most were African immigrants

Source: Daily Post; Liverpool

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