(Nice) A fire, most likely criminal and related to drug trafficking, left seven people dead in the same family of Comorian origin – including three children and a teenager – on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, in a building in Nice in the south-east of France.
The fire ravaged an apartment on the seventh and top floor of a building in a working-class district in the west of the city, plagued by drug trafficking.
“What happened here is absolutely terrible, abominable,” commented Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who went to the scene with Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, indicating that “three individuals are being sought.”
“We are all shocked by the number of victims,” reacted President Emmanuel Macron, on a trip to the United Kingdom.
The toll is indeed terrible. Three minors aged 5, 7, 10 and 17, as well as two women aged 22 and 46, all from the same family of Comorian origin, died in the apartment, the authorities said.
The last, a 45-year-old man, died from his injuries. He had jumped out of a window to escape the blaze, while neighbours had placed mattresses to try to soften the force of the falls.
According to members of the local Comorian community, two members of the family survived: a 17-year-old boy, twin of the one who died in the apartment, and his 19-year-old older brother. “They are destroyed,” said Nadjim Maecha, president of the Comorian solidarity association.
Three fires started
The investigations “fully support the criminal lead,” the prosecution concluded in a press release at the end of the day, mentioning in particular “three fires started on 1er2e and 3e floors”.
The Nice prosecutor, Damien Martinelli, specified that investigators were exploring “the possibility of facts occurring in the context of a conflict over drug trafficking, with no connection to the victims and their families.”
He specifies that the use of video surveillance images from the city of Nice made it possible to detect “a dark-coloured city car” parked on the premises shortly before the fire alarm was raised at exactly 2:28 a.m.
The cameras see “three young men with their faces uncovered, dressed simply in T-shirts and shorts” get out of the vehicle and then “break down the front door of the building” in the impoverished Moulins district.
PHOTO VALERY HACHE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The police inspect the front door of the building.
“They came out again very soon after and fled. The fire broke out just after,” added the prosecutor, according to whom “the multiple ignitions contributed to the very rapid spread of the flames.”
Based on these new elements, the investigation opened on Thursday morning now covers the charges of “deliberate destruction by fire by an organized gang resulting in death” and “criminal association”, the magistrate specified.
In total, around fifteen families were accommodated in a nearby municipal hall, while awaiting rehousing.
Sitting on a folding bed while her four daughters aged 4 to 10 draw, Soibrata, who lived at number 5e floor, spoke of his panic during the night.
“I heard noise, I saw people running outside. There was a fire in the stairwell, smoke was coming in under the door. I woke the children, we called the fire brigade, they told us to put wet towels under the doors and go to the balcony. Finally, we were evacuated on the ladder, first the girls and then us,” she says.
Several residents said they took turns watering the balcony awnings and parasols to prevent the fire from spreading through items falling from the burning balconies.
This fire is the most serious in France since the disaster of August 9, 2023 which left 11 dead in a holiday cottage accommodating people with mild mental disabilities near Colmar, in eastern France.