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FIRE

Explosions heard as fire rips through Berlin supermarket

Fire services in the German capital described witnessing repeated explosions as they struggle against a huge blaze at an Asian supermarket.

Explosions heard as fire rips through Berlin supermarket
The fire seen from afar. Photo: DPA

Fire services were called to the scene at around 11:20 am on Wednesday morning, where a dark plume of smoke visible across Berlin was rising

Dong Xuan Center, Berlin’s largest Asian supermarket located in the Lichtenberg district east of the city centre, had gone up in flames.

By the mid-afternoon, hundreds of firefighters were still battling the blaze, but a spokesperson said that they would let the building burn down in a controlled manner.

“We can’t do any more,” he said.

The fire broke out in a 6,000-square-metre-storage facility where crates of nail polish had been kept, the Berliner Zeitung reports.

Fire crews warned reporters and photographers not to breathe in the smoke, describing it as “highly poisonous.”

But a fire services spokesperson later told Berlin newspaper der Tagesspiegel that measurements hadn’t revealed “dangerous concentrations of pollutants in the air.”

While it is possible that there is poison in the smoke it would be drawn upwards, the spokesperson reassured.

So far no-one has been reported injured as employees of the supermarket were able to evacuate the building before it was gripped by the flames.

Roughly 150 firefighters are currently tackling the fire but have been unable to enter the building as slabs of concrete detached from the hall's steel framework by the heat keep tumbling to the ground.

Police recommend that anyone within five kilometres of the site keep their doors and windows closed to prevent smoke from entering.

Dong Xuan Centre is a sprawling complex comprising shops, restaurants, and small businesses as well as its market halls and warehouses on a former industrial site.

It is a key gathering place for the large Vietnamese population in Lichtenberg, many of whom came to the former East Germany as foreign contract labourers.

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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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