Police said the incident is one of the most deadly fires in the city in decades. (Deutsche Welle)

BERLIN, August 9, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least eight people, four of them children, were killed in a fire suspected to have been caused by arson in an apartment building occupied by Arabs in the German capital Berlin, authorities said Tuesday, August 9.

Eight other people were injured, six of them seriously, in one of the most deadly fires in the city in decades, the head of Berlin's fire services, Albrecht Broemme, said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A further 43 people in the building were treated at the scene for minor cases of smoke inhalation.

The fire began at around 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) Monday, August 8, in a baby carriage on the ground floor of the five-storey building in the city's culturally diverse Moabit district, and then spread through the building floor-by-floor.

As terrified residents fled their apartments they became trapped in the stairwell, where authorities believe the fire started.

"In the beginning the fire seemed fairly harmless," Broemme said.

"But some residents headed straight into disaster. Running for the stairwell was a run toward death."

Rescue operations were complicated by the fact that most of the residents spoke Arabic and little German and were unable to understand instructions from firefighters.

Firefighters said the flames spread more quickly as many residents opened their doors to rush into the corridor.

A police spokesman said that authorities believe that it is of criminal origin.

Around 150 firefighters, 25 emergency vehicles and seven doctors were at the scene.

Authorities were unable to immediately provide details on the identities or ages of the victims.

This is the first suspected arson attacks against the Arab minority in Berlin since the July 7 attacks in London, which killed 56 people including four British-born Muslims.

No sooner had the London blasts taken place than racist attacks against mosques in Britain, the US and New Zealand were reported.

Politicians, scholars and intellectuals across Europe, however, stressed that terror had no religion.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer said in July that Islam was not an enemy of the West, warning of offensive reactions to Muslim minorities across Europe over the London blasts.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has further warned against making Muslims "scapegoats" for the bombings.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had also lashed out at the "gulf of ignorance" which stereotyped Islam and fanned Islamophobia.