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ANIMAL

Police suspect arson as a thousand pigs burn

Some 1,200 pigs, the majority piglets, have died in a fire at a farm in Sjuntorp near Trollhättan in western Sweden in a suspected arson attack.

Two barns with sows and piglets burned down in Sjuntorp in Trollhättan municipality on Tuesday evening. A few hundred pigs were saved from the flames but according to reports around 1,200 died in the fire.

“We don’t know the exact number yet, but it is probably around 1,200,” said Jonas Gustafsson at the emergency services in Trollhättan to the local TTELA daily.

Emergency services from Trollhättan were joined by personnel from Sjuntorp and Lilla Edet in a bid to battle the fire, which was reported by a neighbour at around 10pm.

The fire-fighters managed to keep the fire from spreading to a residential building and two further barns. At around 2.30am the fire was declared to be under control.

Several hundred pigs were saved from the inferno with initial reports indicating that 240 sows and 640 piglets had survived the night.

Police have opened an investigation into arson or aggravated arson. The area was on Tuesday morning placed under guard and police technicians will conduct an inspection of the site during the day.

TT/The Local/pvs

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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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