Fire in France Kills at Least 10, Including 5 Children

A fire tore through an apartment building in the early hours of Friday near Lyon in central France, killing at least 10 people, including five children, the French authorities said.

Over 160 firefighters and more than 60 fire engines attended the blaze, which started around 3 a.m. in a seven-floor building in Vaulx-en-Velin, a northeastern suburb of Lyon, the prefecture for the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region said in a statement.

Four people were also seriously hurt in the blaze, and 10 others, including two firefighters, suffered lighter injuries, the prefecture said. Firefighters managed to extinguish the fire, which started from the ground floor and spread up, filling the building’s communal areas with noxious smoke.

The authorities said that it was not immediately clear how the blaze had started.

Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said that the children killed in the fire were aged 3 to 15. Several of the people who were injured are still “between life and death,” and not all of the victims’ bodies have been identified, he added.