As many as 17people people died while three were let injured in a major fire that broke out in a central Delhi hotel early on Tuesday, a fire official said.
At least 35 others were rescued from the five-storey building. Most people jumped out of the upper floors of the hotel to save their lives.
Two hotel staff members had jumped from the fourth floor of the hotel in an attempt to save themselves. The status of the staff who jumped is yet to be known. The victims also include a woman and a child who tried to escape the fire by jumping out a window.
A call was recieved at around 4.30 in the morning. from Karol Bagh’s Arpit Palace Hotel and immediately 25 fire tenders were rushed to the spot, the officer at the Delhi Fire Department headquarters said.
The recuse and fire fighting operation was called off around 9:50 am and cooling process was started.
Most of the deaths took place due to suffocation, the police said. Those who were rescued and injured, were taken to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
Officials present at the incident cite informed that the fire has been doused. Now they have to look for bodies, if any, inside the hotel.
This comes a week after a massive fire broke out in the ICU of Metro Hospitals and Heart Institute at Noida Sector 12. According to officials, 66 patients were in the hospital, including 16 in the ICU, when the fire broke out around noon. No one was seriously injured and all the patients were evacuated, with most transferred to the hospital’s branch in Sector 11, a few hundred metres away.
