United News of Bangladesh

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.  

Ten people, including five children died as nighttime fire ravaged an eight-story apartment building Friday in one of the city of Lyon’s poorest suburbs, French authorities said. The cause of the fatal blaze was being investigated. Fourteen people were injured in the fire in the small suburban town of Vaulx-en-Velin, four of them seriously, according to the prefecture for the Rhone region. Some 170 firefighters were mobilized after the fire broke out shortly after 3 a.m. The fire has been extinguished. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw several firetrucks and a security perimeter set up around the area, and residents and traumatized neighbors assembling in a car park opposite the building. Read more: Wildfire in southwestern France: 8,000 people evacuated Vaulx-en-Velin, a town of 43,000 inhabitants, is among the most impoverished areas in the Rhone region. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin called the deadly fire “a shock” said that he would travel in the coming hours to the town, which is 470 kilometers (290 miles) southeast of Paris. Darmanin was traveling to Lyon on Friday to present the security plan for Sunday’s final between Argentina and France. Darmanin will be accompanied on his visit by Housing Minister Olivier Klein. It’s the deadliest fire in France since 2019, when an arson attack in a posh Paris district killed 10 people and injured 32 others. Read more: France halts Brazil trade deal over Amazon fires

A fire in an apartment building in northwestern China's Xinjiang region has killed 10 people and injured nine, authorities said Friday. The fire broke out Thursday night in the regional capital of Urumqi, where temperatures have dropped to below freezing after dark. The blaze took around three hours to extinguish. The injured were all expected to survive and the cause of the fire is under investigation, the local government said. Read more: 38 killed in factory fire in China The tragedy comes days after 38 people died in a fire at an industrial trading company in central China caused by welding sparks that ignited cotton cloth. Four people have been detained over the fire in the city of Anyang and local authorities ordered sweeping safety inspections. Aging infrastructure, poor safety awareness and, in some cases, government corruption has led to series of recent fires, explosions and building collapses around China, which continues to grapple with new COVID-19 outbreaks, prompting lockdowns and rigid travel restrictions affecting millions of people. Read more: Maldives fire: Identitties of Bangladeshi victims confirmed