7 immigrants die in new Paris blaze

PARIS – A blaze in a rundown building housing African immigrants in Paris – the second in four days – killed seven people overnight, officials said yesterday, deepening a sense of shock over the plight of France’s impoverished non-citizens.

Officials said four children and three adults died after the blaze broke out in the stairwell of the dilapidated five-storey tenement in which they were squatting. The fire occurred in the Marais, a historic central district popular with tourists, at 10pm on Monday.One of the children received fatal injuries in jumping from a fourth-floor window, firefighters said.”Twelve Ivorian families were living in the squat,” the mayor of the district, Pierre Aidenbaum, told reporters at the scene, adding: “For years people had been saying the living conditions there were dreadful.”More than 100 firefighters battled for an hour and a half to extinguish the flames, the cause of which was being investigated.Police said it was “probably accidental.”The street in front of the building was blocked off yesterday as police and municipal authorities tried to calm distraught survivors.One woman sat on the curb wailing to herself.”The poor woman wasn’t able to get out.Oh God!” she cried, tears running down her face.The tragedy came after a very similar fire last Friday in a rundown apartment block in the city’s southeast in which 14 children and three adults, also African immigrants, died.The cause of that blaze was also being probed.In April, another blaze raced through a dingy hotel close to the old opera and the main department stores, killing 24 Africans.- Nampa-AFPThe fire occurred in the Marais, a historic central district popular with tourists, at 10pm on Monday.One of the children received fatal injuries in jumping from a fourth-floor window, firefighters said.”Twelve Ivorian families were living in the squat,” the mayor of the district, Pierre Aidenbaum, told reporters at the scene, adding: “For years people had been saying the living conditions there were dreadful.”More than 100 firefighters battled for an hour and a half to extinguish the flames, the cause of which was being investigated.Police said it was “probably accidental.”The street in front of the building was blocked off yesterday as police and municipal authorities tried to calm distraught survivors.One woman sat on the curb wailing to herself.”The poor woman wasn’t able to get out.Oh God!” she cried, tears running down her face.The tragedy came after a very similar fire last Friday in a rundown apartment block in the city’s southeast in which 14 children and three adults, also African immigrants, died.The cause of that blaze was also being probed.In April, another blaze raced through a dingy hotel close to the old opera and the main department stores, killing 24 Africans.- Nampa-AFP