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Rescue
workers evacuate a resident from the gutted building. (Reuters)
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PARIS,
September 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – French
police arrested Sunday, September 4, four suspected arsonists after a
conflagration broke out in an apartment block in southern Paris, killing
12 people, including two children, and injuring 35 others, some
seriously.
"The
assumption of a criminal cause of the fire is strong," local police
chief Jean-Luc Marx told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Fire
services captain Michel Cros said the inferno, the third in 10 days,
broke out in an 18-storey block in the town of Hay-les-Roses in the
Val-de-Marne area south of Paris.
The
town's mayor said witnesses saw youths set fire to letter boxes in the
entrance hall of the building.
Fifteen
of those injured suffered from smoke inhalation and were in serious
condition, the firefighters spokesman said.
Two
firefighters were among those less affected by the smoke.
More
than 20 fire engines were rushed to the scene from surrounding areas
after the alarm was raised just after midnight. The blaze was brought
under control in around three hours.
Residents
from all 110 flats in the block were evacuated, with many heading for a
nearby public gymnasium.
One
young woman gave birth in an ambulance brought to the scene, Cros said.
He
emphasized that the deadly fire was in no way similar to the earlier
fires.
"This
is a housing block and has nothing to do with the fires in Paris
squats," he said.
Third
in a Row
It
was the latest in a spate of fires in or around Paris which had already
killed 24 people, mostly African immigrants, in a matter of weeks and
raised questions over hate arsons, fire safety and the treatment of
immigrants.
On
August 26, 17 people, including 14 children, died when fire broke out in
a rundown apartment building housing African immigrants near the
Austerlitz station on the left bank of the Seine.
Three
days later seven other African immigrants were killed in another inferno
in a rundown building in Paris.
Thousands
of protesters demonstrated in central Paris Saturday to demand proper
housing for poor African immigrants in the aftermath of the deadly
fires.
Organizers
said some 10,000 people -- many of them Africans -- marched with banners
from the site of the first fire. Police put the figure at 5,000.
In
April, a massive fire gutted a six-storey Paris hotel, killing 24
people, half of them children.
The
blaze at the hotel, which housed many immigrants, was one of the
deadliest in the French capital in decades.
