France opens manslaughter probe into holiday home blaze

French prosecutors said on Friday they had opened a manslaughter investigation into the death of 11 people in a fire in a holiday home which failed to meet safety standards.

Published: 11 August 2023 15:47 CEST

France opens manslaughter probe into holiday home blaze

French gendarmes and forensics work on Thursday at the holiday home for disabled people in eastern France that caught fire (Photo by Sebastien BOZON / AFP)

Wednesday’s fire, near Colmar in eastern France, was the deadliest such disaster in the country since a blaze in a bar in the northern city of Rouen in 2016 killed 14 people.

The home was unlicenced and flouting fire security standards required for hosting guests, according to local officials.

Friday’s statement said that the case had been taken over by Paris prosecutors who were investigating for “involuntary manslaughter and grievous bodily harm”.

The property was hosting a group of adults with learning disabilities and their companions at the peak of the French summer holiday season in the picturesque area.

The guests on the lower floor of the timbered residence all managed to escape alive, but those on the upper floor found themselves trapped.

The probe announced Friday is to “determine the precise causes of the fire, and any criminal liability”, the statement said.

President Emmanuel Macron called the deaths a “tragedy” this week, while Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne vowed that “all light” would be shed on what she described as an “appalling” disaster.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.