A fire in a dilapidated and overcrowded apartment building in a poor suburb north of Paris left six dead, including five children, and 25 injured, firefighters said Friday.
It took more than two hours for some 150 firefighters to put out the blaze that started overnight in the stairwell of the six-floor apartment block located in Saint-Denis, north of Paris.
Residents were evacuated from the building and 25 people were taken to hospital to receive care for minor injuries, according to emergency services.
Police were investigating to determine the cause of the fire that began at around 3:25 am (0225 GMT) Friday.
The bodies of the 30-year-old woman and two children aged two, who died from smoke inhalation, were found early in the day.
Firefighters later announced that the bodies of two more children, age 20 months and five, were discovered while combing through the burnt debris. The body of the fifth child was pulled out of the building shortly after noon.
Firefighters said the rescue effort, in which some 85 people were evacuated from the building, was complicated by the fact that many people were living in the apartments.
"The difficulty came from the fact that the apartments were overcrowded with five or six mattresses in the kitchen -- same thing in the living room -- which is why we had to stage several rescue operations," said firefighter Jean-Joel Clady, who led the effort.
"We heard people yelling for help, who were trying to climb out of windows, and then the police came to our door to tell us to get out," said a 14-year old teenager who did not want to give her name.
"People were screaming, the flames rose from the windows. I even saw someone leap from the third floor," said Mourad Hacheni, who lives in an adjacent apartment block.
Neighbors said many African immigrants lived in the block of flats including Mamadou Fofana, who lived on the sixth floor with his wife and ten children.
Fofana said he had asked the housing authorities for a move "but all of my requests were rejected." -- SAINT-DENIS, France (AFP)
