Paris police arrested four suspects after the latest fire in an apartment building in a Paris suburb left 12 people dead, local authorities said on Sunday.
Mayor Patrick Seve of L’Hay-les-Roses in the Department Val-de-Marnes said witnesses had seen four young people setting fire to the 18-storey apartment block, which held more than 100 flats. The fire had started in the entryway of the building.
Among the dead are two children. Another 35 people were injured by smoke inhalation, 15 of them seriously, spokesperson Michel Cros of the fire rescue services said.
A pregnant woman, who lived on the 10th floor of the building, gave birth to her child in an ambulance, the spokesperson said.
The survivors of the fire were taken to a local sports hall where a shelter had been set up, he added.
The fire was extinguished shortly before 3am, just less than two hours after rescue services were called to the scene. In total, 160 firefighters had been deployed to the scene.
The outcome of the incident would have been less disastrous if the residents in the apartment block had kept their doors shut, the spokesman said.
Cros added the smoke reached all 18 floors of the building, which itself had been in good condition.
He said the latest fire was unlike the series of fire that occurred in cheap accommodation housing mainly foreign immigrants in recent weeks.
On August 26, at least 17 people — 14 of them children — died when a fire broke out in south-east Paris in a building housing mainly African immigrants. Thirty people were injured in the incident.
On August 30, seven people died in another fire also in a building with African residents. Fourteen people were injured, three of them seriously.
Another 24 people, including 12 children, died in mid-April in a fire in the hotel Paris-Opera in Paris, which was housing mainly asylum seekers from Africa. During this fire, some people were trapped in windowless rooms. — Sapa-DPA