Germany: Police investigating apartment block fire arson claims

Police were looking into claims Tuesday that a fire which claimed nine lives in an apartment block inhabited by Turkish immigrants may have been started deliberately.


"We're investigating in every direction," a police spokesman said after a young girl was shown on television describing how she saw a person setting fire to a stick before the building went up in flames on Sunday afternoon.


Some 60 persons were injured in the blaze, which broke out just after a carnival parade had finished and quickly engulfed the four-storey structure in the southwest industrial city of Ludwigshafen.


Fire officers, who inspected the smouldering building on Tuesday morning, said it was unlikely that more victims were inside.


Many of the tenants in the low-rent building, close to the town hall, were ethnic Turks. Most of the dead died from smoke inhalation. Among them were a pregnant woman and five children.

The dead and injured were trapped when the stairwell in the brick and plaster building was blocked by flames. Police and firefighters were unable to save them.


There were scenes of panic as residents jumped from upper-storey windows or threw their small children into the arms of rescuers standing below.


The fire brigade held up safety blankets, "but in their panic some people missed them and landed on the ground," one witness said.


"People jumping from the top floor hit the ground like a bullet," a fire officer was quoted as saying by the newspaper Die Welt.


Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly asked German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble for a Turkish team to take part in the investigation.


Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday said Turkey was watching developments closely.


"Because of even worse events that have happened in the past we are looking for a meticulous investigation," Gul said referring to previous arson attacks by neo-Nazis that have targeted Turkish immigrants in Germany.


German Social Democrat leader Kurt Beck, who is prime minister of the state where Ludwigshafen is located, said Monday there was no indication of a racially motivated attack.


Guests had been in the upper apartments to watch the carnival parade and it took many hours for police to list all the occupants and realize the scale of the incident.


Eva Lohse, mayor of the city, cancelled the remaining two days of carnival celebrations in the city. Just before the blaze, 250,000 people had been cheering and laughing on nearby streets.


The fire chief said that although 500 rescuers were at the site, it would have been too dangerous to extinguish the fire with torrents of water because this would have flashed into steam, killing people trapped inside.


Source: Expatica (English)