A 42-year-old Somalian woman and five of her daughters, aged one to 16, have died in a fire in their Stockholm flat, Swedish police said Sunday.
A sixth daughter was taken to hospital in a serious condition and an eighth victim was also taken to hospital with minor injuries.
The tragedy is the deadliest in the Scandinavian country since 1998, when a fire in the city of Gothenburg killed 63 people.
The Stockholm blaze broke out around 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Saturday on the ground floor of a block of flats in the suburb of Rinkeby, about 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) west of Stockholm city centre, and spread rapidly.
The victims became trapped in the burning building and were overcome by smoke as they tried to flee, a police spokesman said.
“The fire started in a ground-floor flat and spread through the building, which caused the deaths,” Stockholm police spokesman Jens Wismar told AFP.
Police dismissed reports in Swedish media, which cited witnesses saying the victims died trapped in the building’s lift.
During a press conference on Sunday, emergency services added the bodies were found in the block’s staircases.
The cause of the fire, which led to the evacuation of around 20 people in the area, was still being investigated but police do not believe it was started intentionally.
Current evidence pointed more towards “dangerous negligence,” police spokeswoman Karin Solberg told Swedish news agency TT.
Built mostly in the 1960s, Rinkeby is a modest district with a large immigrant community.
More than 60 percent of its inhabitants were born outside Sweden, according to figures from local authorities.
Sourse: The Swedish Wire
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