20 dead in Paris hotel blaze

At least 20 people were killed, half of them children, and almost 60 were injured when fire swept through a central Paris hotel before dawn today.

Firefighters rescued some people from the six-storey Paris Opera hotel, but others were forced to jump out of windows to escape the flames and smoke.

At least 11 survivors were seriously injured in the blaze at the one-star hotel, which is in a tourist district in the French capital's ninth arrondissement.

The exact cause of the fire is not yet known, but it broke out some time after 2am local time (0100 BST) in the first-floor breakfast room when most guests were sleeping.

Laurent Vibert, a fire services spokesman, said many of the 76 guests at the hotel had been African. The hotel is used by local authorities to provide temporary social housing for asylum seekers and others.

The dead were recovered "from the road, from inside, just about everywhere," Mr Vibert said. The bodies of four Africans were found in the breakfast room.

Police said the injured were from France, the US, Portugal, Senegal, Tunisia, Ukraine and Ivory Coast. Australians, Canadians and Tunisians were among those who escaped the fire.

Witnesses described horrific scenes as the fire spread quickly and panicking guests tried to escape.

Chakib San, who lives next door to the hotel, said he woke up to cries of fire. He saw three people - including a woman and a child who lay motionless after hitting the ground - jumping from the lower floors of the building.

"They were on the ground. They weren't moving," he said. "Everyone was screaming. There were bodies in the road."

The French president, Jacques Chirac, said the fire was one of the city's "most painful catastrophes".

Before the emergency services arrived, a woman who works in a nearby hotel brought out a ladder that was used to rescue a young girl from the first floor.

At least one person sought refuge on the burning roof, screaming and waving frantically for help as flames poured from windows and fire officers scrambled up ladders.

Witnesses described how a fire officer cradled an infant in his arms as he carried him to safety amid jets of water from fire hoses that doused the flames.

Stanislas Bricage, a Frenchman who was evacuated from an adjacent hotel along with about 20 Americans, said: "We heard a lot of screams."

Up to 15 people, some of whom had leapt from the hotel's windows, were taken to hospital. The injured suffered burns, trauma and the effects of smoke inhalation.

It took more than an hour to bring the fire under control and it still smouldered hours later.

More than eight hours after the blaze began, rescue workers were still pulling bodies from inside the scorched building. By daylight it was clear that almost the entire hotel had become blackened inside.

The nearby Galeries Lafayette department store, which is popular with tourists and close to the 19th-century Garnier opera house, was used as a makeshift hospital to treat some of the injured. The store was also used as a temporary morgue.

More than 250 firefighters and 50 fire engines attended the scene.

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