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FIRE

No foul play behind fatal summer fire

A series of investigations have shown that there was no malicious intent behind a fire that claimed the lives of seven people in a Stockholm suburb this summer.

No foul play behind fatal summer fire
Mourners gather at the funeral of the victims of the fire

Three separate investigations have all reached the conclusion that the deaths of a mother, her five daughters, and a teenage girl occurred after a lamp caught fire in a bedroom in an apartment on the ground floor of a block of flats. The Somali family killed in the blaze lived on the fifth floor.

The investigations – carried out by the police, the National Laboratory of Forensic Science, and the Swedish Accident Investigation Board – each concluded that the fire broke out when a piece of cloth fell over a lamp, causing it burn and eventually short circuit.

Investigators believe this is the only credible explanation for the fire.

Once the fire broke out, it spread to other objects in the bedroom, which was unoccupied. By the time the residents realised what was happening the blaze had already taken full hold.

“The occupants were force to evacuate the apartment as quickly as they could. When the firemen arrived at the scene the apartment was ablaze,” police spokesman Mats Eriksson told the TT news agency.

Prosecutors have now dropped the case in light of the investigations’ findings.

The fire broke out late in the evening of July 20th in a ground floor apartment in Rinkeby in north-west Stockholm. The occupants of the apartment ravaged by the blaze managed to leave the building.

But higher up in the building, a Somali mother, her five young children and a teenage girl all died of smoke inhalation in the stairwell while trying to flee the building.

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FIRE

Barcelona fire kills four, including two children

A fire ripped through an abandoned bank occupied by squatters in central Barcelona on Tuesday, killing four people, including a baby and a three year-old boy, Spanish firefighters said.

Police and firefighters gather outside an abandoned building where a blaze broke out early on November 30, 2021 in Barcelona, killing four people.
Police and firefighters gather outside an abandoned building where a blaze broke out early on November 30, 2021 in Barcelona, killing four people. (Photo by Pau BARRENA / AFP)

“While we were battling the fire, we found four people. Emergency services tried to revive them but unfortunately they failed, they could not do anything to save them,” the head of the firefighting operation, Ángel López, told reporters.

Firefighters rescued four other people who were inside the building while putting out the blaze, he added.

Those four were treated for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters rushed to the scene at around 6 am after being warned that a blaze had broken out in the building, Mr Lopez said.

While Mr López said it was not clear how the four dead people were related, Barcelona-based daily newspaper La Vanguardia said they were all members of a Romanian family.

A spokesman for Catalonia’s regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, said an investigation had been opened into the causes of the fire.

In December 2020, four people were killed after a blaze ripped through an industrial complex occupied by squatters, many of them African migrants, near Barcelona.

Over 100 squatters were believed to be living in precarious conditions at the abandoned complex in Badalona, a suburban town north of the city.

In addition to the four deaths, more than 20 people were injured in the blaze.

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