27 People Feared Dead As Fire Razes Mental Clinic In Osaka, Japan
Firefighters at the building where the fire broke out in Osaka. Photograph: KYODO/Reuters
LAGOS DECEMBER 17TH (NEWSRANGERS)-Twenty-seven people were feared dead after a fire swept through a mental health clinic in the Japanese city of Osaka, the local fire department said.
The blaze is being treated as suspected arson, the Kyodo news agency said, quoting police sources saying that a man who appeared to be in his 60s had been seen carrying a paper bag leaking an unidentified liquid.
A witness reportedly said the fire had started soon after the man had placed the bag near the fourth-storey clinic’s reception counter.
The prime minister, Fumio Kishida, offered his condolences and said authorities were trying to establish the cause of the fire.
An official at the Osaka fire department said 27 people were in cardiopulmonary arrest – a term Japanese media use before a death is confirmed by a doctor – and one person was injured. Media reports later said at least 20 people had been confirmed dead.
A doctor at one of the hospitals treating the victims said he believed many of them had died from carbon monoxide inhalation.
Television footage showed dozens of firefighters working inside and outside the eight-storey building in a commercial district of the western port city after the blaze was extinguished.
The charred interior of the fourth floor of the narrow office building was visible through broken and blackened windows.
The floor housed a clinic that provided mental health services and general medical care, local media said.
“The fire was detected at 10.18am at the fourth floor,” the official said. “As of noon, 70 fire engines are at the scene.”
The blaze, in the busy business and entertainment district near Kitashinchi train station, was put out after half an hour, they added. People on other floors of the building are believed to have been evacuated.
“When I looked outside, I saw an orange flame in the window on the fourth floor of the building,” an unnamed witness, who had been in their nearby office, told Kyodo. “A woman was waving her hand from the window on the sixth floor and seeking help.”
A middle-aged woman who witnessed the fire told public broadcaster NHK: “There was lots of a dark smoke … there was a very strong smell, too.”
The fire is the most deadly in Japan since July 2019, when an arson attack at an animation studio in Kyoto killed 36 people.
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Posted by News Rangers
on Dec 17 2021. Filed under Health, International, National.
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