Paris — A fire that raced through a crowded, rundown Paris apartment building housing African immigrants killed 17 people, mainly children trapped while they slept, and triggered angry calls Friday for decent housing for those in need in the French capital.
This image made available by the Paris Firefighter Brigade shows firefighters evacuating victims after a blaze raced through an apartment building housing African immigrants in Paris on Friday. A least 17 people were killed, half of them children, in the blaze. Many of the victims were from the west African nation of Mali, officials say.
It was the second deadly blaze since spring to strike poor immigrants in the French capital. In April, a fire at a budget hotel killed 24 people, also mostly from Africa and including many children.
About 400 people demonstrated Friday night in front of the devastated building on a main boulevard in southeast Paris demanding that empty buildings be requisitioned to house those in need.
"More than ever, housing must be a national priority," Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said after Friday's blaze. Paris has 110,000 unanswered requests for low-cost housing, according to associations working with those in need.
The fire started under the ground-floor stairwell about midnight and raged for three hours in the seven-story building, prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said. A small, open window at the top of the building "created a wind tunnel that turned the stairwell into a veritable chimney," he said.
Of the 17 killed, 14 were children, Marin said. Another 23 people were injured, two seriously. People jumped from open windows to escape the flames while others were choked by the smoke as they slept. More than 200 firefighters fought the blaze.
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