A fire that ripped through a retirement home in a city in Bosnia has killed at least 11 people in what the country’s prime minister on Wednesday called a “disaster of enormous proportions.”
The fire broke out on Tuesday evening and engulfed the top floors of a retirement home in the city, Tuzla, which is about 75 miles northeast of the capital, Sarajevo, officials said.
Most of those who died in the fire were residents of the Tuzla Retirement Home, according to the authorities. Ten people were killed at the scene, while another died after being taken to a nearby hospital, officials said.
“Unfortunately, this is a disaster of enormous proportions and, certainly, I send my condolences to the families of the deceased,” Nermin Niksic, the prime minister, told the state broadcaster, BHRT, as the extent of the disaster became clear early Wednesday.
It took nearly two hours to contain the blaze with eight fire trucks and dozens of police officers, according to the Tuzla City Council. Television footage showed city residents helping people out of the building as smoke billowed from the top floors.
Twenty people were admitted to a hospital in Tuzla. Among them where six firefighters and three police officers, the medical center said in a statement. Five people were in a critical condition on ventilators, it added.
Officials from the federal government will visit Tuzla to assess the damage, Mr. Niksic said in a statement released by his office. The cause of the fire was still to be determined.
“I see some people saying that some were irresponsible and did not follow all instructions to turn off all electronic devices in use,” Mr. Niksic said in the statement. “I assume that the home employees controlled as much as they could, but we need to wait to see what specifically happened.”
The director of the retirement home resigned hours after the fire.
“That’s all I can do, as a person, regardless of what the investigation will show, is to resign because of what happened last night,” the director, Mirsad Bakalovic, told a local television station.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
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