A fire that tore through an apartment building in northeastern Spain has left five people dead and five others with minor injuries, regional emergency officials said late Monday.
The blaze began in a storage area of a five-story residential building in Manlleu, a town of about 21,000 residents located north of Barcelona, authorities in the Catalonia region said in a statement.
Authorities said the victims were unable to escape from the attic storage room for reasons that remain unclear. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. Identification of the victims is expected later Tuesday, as several bodies were severely burned.
According to Catalan police, all five of the deceased were young people and were not residents of the building.
Salvador Illa, head of the regional government, expressed his condolences on X, saying he was “deeply saddened by the death of five people” and extended sympathy to their families.
Emergency services said four of the injured were discharged from hospital, while another person did not require hospitalization.
Police have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the blaze, but have not indicated whether it is being treated as a potential homicide case.