Photograph: MICHELE SPATARI/AFP via Getty Images
No fewer than 73 people have been confirmed dead in a fire disaster that engulfed a multistorey building, believed to have been used by homeless people, in Johannesburg, emergency services said.
Some of the people may have died after they threw themselves out of windows to escape the fire, a local government official said as cited by The Irish Times.
Seven of the victims were children, the youngest a one-year-old, according to an emergency services spokesperson.
Some witnesses said that no fewer than 200 people may have been living in the building.
Another 52 people were injured in the fire, which broke out in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, emergency management services said.
Spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said a search-and-recovery operation was underway and it was likely the death toll would rise.
Authorities said the fire had been largely extinguished but smoke still seeped out of windows of the blackened building in downtown Johannesburg.
Abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area are common and often taken over by people desperately seeking some form of accommodation. City authorities refer to them as “hijacked buildings”.
Mr Mulaudzi said the death toll was likely to increase and more were likely trapped inside the building.
The fire took three hours to contain, he said, and firefighters had only worked their way through three of the building’s five floors by mid-morning.
Mr Mulaudzi said: “This is a tragedy for Johannesburg. Over 20 years in the service, I’ve never come across something like this.”
The building’s interior was effectively “an informal settlement” where shacks and other structures had been thrown up and people were crammed into rooms, he added.
He said there were “obstructions” everywhere that would have made it very difficult for residents to escape the fire and which hindered emergency crews.
Mr Mulaudzi said search teams found 64 bodies, and the chance of anyone being found alive hours after the fire broke out was “very slim”.
City officials said 141 families were affected by the tragedy, although they were not able to immediately say how many people were in the building at the time of the fire.
Many of them were believed to be foreign nationals, officials said.
One witness who did not want to give his name told the television news channel eNCA that he lived in a building next door and heard people screaming for help.
Mgcini Tshwaku, a local government official, said there were indications that people lit fires inside the building to keep warm in the winter cold.
Officials are looking into the cause of the fire.