ZCZC
BFF-24
FRANCE-FIRE-INVESTIGATION
Mother and child die in French fire following bakery blast
LYON, Feb 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A woman and a child were killed in a fire in
the eastern city of Lyon believed to have been sparked by a gas blast in a
bakery, authorities said.
The fire comes days after 10 people were killed in a blaze at a Paris
apartment building and a month after a massive gas explosion in the centre of
the capital that left four dead in a building that also housed a bakery.
The Lyon fire broke out Saturday night after the blast in the bakery on
the ground floor of the two-storey building.
“Two bodies were found, that of a woman and a child,” Lyon’s public
prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet said, adding that police were investigating the
cause of the blaze.
Witnesses told AFP that a man who suffered minor injuries after jumping
from the second floor told the fire service that his pregnant wife and child
were still inside. Three passersby were also slightly hurt.
“Blue flames several metres high rose up from the bakery and engulfed the
upper floors,” Chahine Reghi, a man living across the street, told AFP.
Tuesday’s inferno in Paris was started by a resident with psychological
problems, investigators said. The suspect, who is in her 40s, has been
charged over the fire, which was the deadliest in the city in over a decade.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1548 hrs