Five children among 10 killed in Lyon apartment block fire

Five children including a three-year-old were among 10 people killed when a fire broke out in a seven-storey apartment building in a suburb of the French city of Lyon, the government said on Friday.

Published: 16 December 2022 08:25 CET
Updated: 16 December 2022 10:07 CET

Five children among 10 killed in Lyon apartment block fire

Policemen guard a security perimeter as firefighters and rescuers battle the blaze in Vaulx-en-Velin, near Lyon. Photo by OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP

Fourteen people were injured, including four who required emergency treatment, after the fire erupted in Vaulx-en-Velin in the northern outskirts of Lyon, in eastern France, the local authorities said.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters in Paris before heading to the scene that 10 people were killed, including five children aged between three and 15.

“We do not know the cause of the fire and the investigation will be able to find out,” he said.

“It’s shocking and the toll is extremely heavy,” he said, adding he had already discussed what had happened with President Emmanuel Macron.

The fire has been put out, local authorities said, adding that the blaze erupted shortly after 3:00 am in Vaulx-en-Velin.

Two firefighters suffered light injuries while battling the blaze, which broke out on the ground floor of the building, they said.

‘Horrific’

Smoke as well as flames then surged upwards, putting all the residents of the building in danger.

“I heard people shouting ‘help, help, help, help us’,” said Assed Belal, a young resident of the neighbourhood who was there during the fire.

“There were people on the ground, others stuck on the balconies and the firefighters had difficulty in intervening because of the trees,” he told AFP.

He said his friends had told him they managed to catch a 10-year-old boy who was thrown from an upper floor by his mother to save his life.

“We all know each other, it’s really terrible, I don’t have the words,” he added.”

Nearly 170 firefighters had been deployed at the building.

“It was horrific,” said Mohamed, whose last name was not given, the cousin of a resident who managed to escape from the fourth floor to safety with his two children.

A large security cordon was set up in the area, a district that had been undergoing a process of substantial urban renewal.

The emergency services were busy on the scene with ambulances, trucks and flashing lights, according to an AFP photographer.

In the middle of the night and on one of the coldest nights of the winter, the rescue operation took place in “difficult conditions”, said Darmanin.

The area had often been the scene of social tensions in the Lyon suburbs, sometimes gritty areas in total contrast to the glitzy city centre which is a magnet for international gastro-tourism.

But the local authorities in the early 2000s launched a program worth €100 million to revamp it into a so-called “eco-district” to develop local shops and expand public transport.

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Police intervened as dozens of students gathered on a central Paris campus of the prestigious Sciences Po university on Wednesday evening, management said.

“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement to AFP, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university.

But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site,” the statement added.

Sciences Po said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.

According to the police préfecture, students had set up around 10 tents.

When members of law enforcement arrived, “50 students left on their own, 70 were evacuated calmly from 0.20am” and the police “left at 1.30am, with no incidents to report,” the police said.

The protesters demanded that Sciences Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” according to witnesses.

The protest was organised by the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po.

In a statement on Thursday, the group said its activists had been “carried out of the school by more than fifty members of the security forces,” adding that “around a hundred” police officers were “also waiting for them outside”.

Sciences Po management “stubbornly refuses to engage in genuine dialogue,” the group said.

The organisers have called for “a clear condemnation of Israel’s actions by Sciences Po” and a commemorative event “in memory of the innocent people killed by Israel,” among other demands.

Separately, the Student Union of Sciences Po Paris said the decision by university officials to call in the police was “both shocking and deeply worrying” and reflected “an unprecedented authoritarian turn”.

Many top US universities have been rocked by protests in recent weeks, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

The war in Gaza began with an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7th that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.