At least two died and more than a dozen were injured when a fire broke out in a squat housing up to 200 migrants at an abandoned industrial estate in a Barcelona suburb. Firefighters say the building is in danger of collapse.
The blaze broke out at around 9:00pm local time on Wednesday in an industrial area of Badalona, a municipality of the Spanish city of Barcelona.
Local media reported that up to 200 migrants had lived in squalid conditions in the building. Many are said to have managed to escape when the fire broke out, but some are said to have been injured after jumping from its windows to escape the blaze.
Videos from the scene show a massive fire ravaging the building, and clouds of billowing black smoke.
Barcelona authorities said they don’t yet know exactly how many people were in the building at the time of the fire, however – and there could still be people trapped inside.
Firefighters said that part of the building has already collapsed, and warned that the whole structure was in danger of falling in. The fire service posted a picture of the aftermath of the fire on its official Twitter account.
“It was a squat which we had, for years, known could end in tragedy,” Badalona Mayor Xavier García Albiol is quoted as saying by local media.
Nineteen people have so far been reported as injured, and three of those are in a critical condition. Officials say the cause of the fire, which has now been put out, is as yet unknown.
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