Belarus

Fire at mental hospital kills at least 30

A fire believed to have been set by a psychiatric patient engulfed a Belarusian mental hospital Sunday, killing 30 patients and reducing much of the century-old wooden building to ash.

One of the 62 patients who lived at the hospital in the village of Randilovshchina was missing. Emergency officials said they did not know whether he ran away or died.

A spokeswoman for President Alexander Lukashenko, Natalya Petkevich, said the fire was set by a patient who had tried to burn down the building twice before. The patient was among those killed.

But Igor Zarembo, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry, said investigators were also considering a second possibility — that the fire resulted from carelessness on the part of the staff.

A nurse and an orderly apparently panicked and tried to put out the fire and rescue patients themselves, instead of immediately calling for help, Zarembo said.

Paris

Libya, France resume compensation talks

Spurred into action by stern words from France, Libya resumed efforts to reach a compensation deal with families of victims of a 1989 airliner bombing, a French negotiator said Sunday.

Libyan negotiators made contact Saturday afternoon, as a deadline neared and just hours after President Jacques Chirac warned that Libya’s ties with France would suffer if it did not conclude a deal, Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc said.

Chirac, addressing the issue again on Sunday, welcomed Libya’s decision to resume contacts as “a positive sign.

“I hope that the commitments made at the highest levels by Libya … will be respected,” the French president told reporters.

Victims’ families are seeking additional compensation on top of $33 million that Libya already paid in 1999. Libya has offered an extra $1 million for each family of the 170 victims, but Denoix de Saint Marc said that was not enough.