10 dead, including 5 children, in France apartment fire

Police officer stands by a firefighter truck next to apartment buildings seen in background at Le Mas du Taureaum neighborhood, in Vauls en Velin, outside Lyon, central France, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. French authorities say 10 people including five children died in a fire in an apartment building outside the city of Lyon. The cause of the fire is being investigated.

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.

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, reports UNB.