Vietnam: Hanoi Apartment Fire Leaves At Least 50 Casualties

A fire broke out at a nine-story apartment tower in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Tuesday night, resulting in more than 50 casualties, the country’s state-run news media said.

Hanoi officials announced the figure, which includes dead and injured, hours after the blaze in a central district of the capital, the Dan Tri newspaper reported on Wednesday morning.

The exact death toll was not immediately clear, but Dan Tri reported that many of the 54 people who had been hospitalized after the fire had died.

The building in the Thanh Xuan district is home to 45 households, and many residents were at home when the fire started around 11:30 p.m., the official Vietnam News Agency reported. The agency said the fire was hard to fight in part because the tower lies in a narrow alley, and fire trucks had to park 300 to 400 meters, or 985 to 1,315 feet, away.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear on Wednesday morning.

Last year, a fire at a three-story karaoke bar in southern Vietnam killed 32 people, making it the deadliest fire in the country in a decade.

This is a developing story.