French prosecutors have opened an investigation into “wilful damage leading to death” after a pre-dawn blaze killed 10 people in a rundown seven-storey block of flats outside Lyon.
The Lyon public prosecutor’s office said six adults and four children died in the fire on Friday in Vaulx-en-Velin and 24 people had been injured, four of whom remained in a serious condition in hospital. Initial reports said five adults and five children were killed.
The prosecutor, Nicolas Jacquet, said all the victims had been identified and the forensic investigation tended to confirm witness reports that the blaze had started in a ground-floor apartment before spreading rapidly to the upper storeys of the building.
Police had so far found no trace of flammable liquids or other evidence that the fire could have been caused by arson, Jacquet said, but added it was “not yet possible to determine whether or it was accidental or was started deliberately”.
Residents said a number of complaints had been made about squatters occupying a flat in the privately owned block, and the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has acknowledged the building was a known hangout for drug dealers.
The building was evacuated on Friday and 38 families – roughly 100 residents – have since been rehoused in emergency accommodation pending a more permanent solution, said Hélène Geoffroy, the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin.
Several hundred people gathered on Saturday outside the town hall, whose flags were flown at half mast, for a silent vigil in memory of the victims. Geoffroy praised an “immense wave of community solidarity” that had “eased survivors’ pain”.
Vaulx-en-Velin, a former industrial area about three miles (5km) north of the wealthy centre of Lyon, has a population of 43,000, including a large number of immigrant families. A third of the town’s residents live below the poverty threshold.
Dotted with public housing blocks, it was the scene of riots in 1990 sparked by the death of a youth hit by a police car. In the early 2000s, city authorities launched a €100m programme to revamp the area into a so-called “eco-district”.
France has had several deadly fires in recent decades. In February 2019, 10 people were killed and 96 wounded in a fire in Paris. In 2005, also in the capital, 24 people were killed in a fire in a residential home used by families of African origin.
