A mother who leaped to her death from a burning flat after throwing her child to safety is among ten victims of an apartment block fire in France today.
The woman, who has not yet been identified, became trapped after a blaze broke out on the ground floor of a seven-storey block in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon, shortly after 3am on Friday and spread upwards.
Witnesses told how the woman threw her child from the window of her apartment into the crowd below who caught the infant, but then jumped herself and was fatally injured during the fall.
Five children, aged between three and 15, are among the victims of the fire which also wounded 14 – including four who are in critical condition in hospital.
Ten people have died, including five children, and four more are critically wounded after a fire broke out in an apartment block in the French city of Lyon in the early hours of Friday
The blaze started in a ground floor apartment (pictured) and spread upwards, trapping people in their homes including one woman who jumped to her death
Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said he is in ‘shock’ after hearing the news and will travel to the scene today.
Asked about the cause of the fire, he said ‘multiple hypotheses’ are possible and an investigation is underway.
Local authorities said they are ruling nothing out in their investigations, including that the fire may have been started deliberately.
Neighbours said that squatters – possibly drug dealers – had lived on the ground floor of the building.
Mr Darmanin said he was awake throughout the night giving updates on the situation to President Emmanuel Macron, and will visit the site of the fire today.
Asked about the cause of the blaze, he told French news station BFMTV that ‘several hypotheses’ are possible and an investigation is underway.
A witness told the news station: ‘We heard screams, children screaming. When we opened the windows, we saw smoke coming out and suddenly we went downstairs.
‘Neighbors came with a ladder, we were still able to evacuate people who live on the first floor, on the garden side.’
Investigations into the cause of the fire are underway, with officials saying they are ruling nothing out – including the possibility the fire was started deliberately
The five children killed are aged between three and 15, France’s interior minister said, as he announce he will visit the site today
Locals say the fire happened in one of Lyon’s most-deprived neighbourhoods and that squatters were living on the bottom floor of the block
Another said: ‘[I heard] a dad who cried my children, save my children help my children’
Some 165 firefighters and 70 vehicles were sent to fight the fire in total. The exact cause of the blaze, which took four hours to extinguish, is currently unknown.
The building where the fire happened has seven stories in total, plus a basement.
It is located in the Mas du Taureau district of Lyon, once considered one of the city’s most-deprived, but has been the subject of a recent regeneration plan.
Starting in the early 2000s, Lyon invested large sums of money to improve local shops and public transport links, according to Le Monde.
However, locals told journalists that conditions in the neighbourhood are still poor and that many people there feel abandoned.
Police patrol a security perimeter set up around an apartment block in Lyon, France, where a fire killed at least 10 people on Friday
Onlookers walk by a security perimeter set up next to an apartment block that caught fire early Friday morning, killing multiple people
The fire happened in the eastern Lyon suburb of Vaulx-en-Velin, which was described by locals as one of the city’s most-deprived
