Blaze Hits Paris's Immigrant Community

At least 17 people, including 13 children and a baby, died yesterday when fire swept through the upper storeys of a shabby Paris apartment block housing mainly immigrant families from Africa.

Hours after the blaze, cracked window boxes, broken flowers, a few worn chairs and a child's pushchair still lay on the pavement outside, apparently flung from the blackened windows as the fire raged.

Inside the building, firefighters and police picked through the charred interior, bagging samples for laboratory analysis. There was no indication of the cause of the blaze, which started shortly after midnight in the wooden stairwell between the third and sixth floors.

Outside, anxious friends and relatives continued to arrive. "I don't know where they are," cried a man called Jimmy, from Gambia. "Did they get out? Pray God they didn't jump." A cousin, his wife and their five children had lived in the block for more than 10 years, he said.

Some 30 people were injured, at least one seriously. Almost all the victims were African immigrants, mainly from Mali but also from Senegal, Ghana and Tunisia, officials said.

The state-owned block, run by the respected French humanitarian organisation Emmaus and managed by a private company, France Euro Habitat, housed some 130 people, including 100 children.

The blaze was the second of its kind in months. In April, a fire apparently caused by candles left burning on the floor of a communal kitchen tore through a budget hotel used for temporary accommodation for immigrant families, killing 24.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, ordered an immediate inventory of all similar buildings, suggesting several may be closed if they are overcrowded or a patent fire risk.

"It's an extremely heavy toll," said Mr Sarkozy, visiting the scene in the early hours. Many residents of the "plainly overcrowded" building had been asphyxiated in their sleep, he said, adding: "It's an abominable spectacle."

One resident, Oumar Cissé, 72, told French radio he had been awakened by screams and had seen from his second-floor window smoke pouring from the upper floors. Some people jumped, he said.

"It was horrific. We only survived because my son soaked our door with water, and the fire brigade got here very fast. They led us out."

Mr Cissé, who has lived in the building on the Boulevard Vincent Auriol in the 13th arrondissement for 15 years and acts as a spokesman for the residents, said the block was "unfit for habitation", overrun with rats and mice, with cracked walls, rotting stairs and unsafe electricity.

Humanitarian organisations and politicians from across the spectrum said the new fire underlined the gravity of the housing problem in the capital and surrounding region.

"These insalubrious, indecent housing facilities once again prove we are facing an unprecedented housing crisis in our country," said the former Socialist minister, Martine Aubry.

"We are all responsible. No government, from left or right, has really addressed this issue, and it must now be an absolute priority."

According to Paris city hall, more than 100,000 needy families applied for council or subsidised housing last year, up from some 85,000 a decade ago. Thousands of poor families - many of immigrant origin - live for years in run-down hotels or dilapidated "temporary" accommodation.

But Serge Blisko, the mayor of the 13th arrondissement, and Martin Hirsch, the chairman of Emmaus, said the ravaged building may not have been in immaculate condition but was not a health hazard.

"I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was regularly and responsibly maintained and undergoing a gradual and thorough renovation," Mr Hirsch said.

Another official said major structural improvements had been carried out recently but further improvements had been impossible without rehousing the residents, "which no one wanted to do".

The families living there were not recent arrivals in France but had full residence permits and jobs allowing them to pay the monthly rent of between €500 and €700,(£341 and £477) he said. French media said many had previously protested at the block's condition.

Both officials acknowledged, however, that many of the families living in the block were "very large", sometimes with as many as 12 children.

"When you have a fire and there are maybe 14, 15 people sleeping in a three-roomed apartment, it's evident that there are going to be many casualties," Mr Blisko said.

Captain Jacques Dauvergne of the Paris fire service said the first engines were at the scene within nine minutes of the alarm being given at 12.17am. More than 200 firefighters fought the blaze for 90 minutes before bringing it under control, making more than 20 sorties into the building.

Survivors, wrapped in red blankets, were comforted by Red Cross workers at first in a nearby cafe and then taken to a sports hall off the nearby Place d'Italie, where nurses and a team of psychologists were at hand.

"This dreadful catastrophe plunges all France into mourning," said President Jacques Chirac in a statement. He ordered that the cause of the fire be determined "as quickly as possible" so that "all the consequences can be drawn".