MURCIA, SPAIN (AFP) – At least 13 people were killed in a fire in a Spanish nightspot on Sunday, officials said, with fears the toll could still rise as rescue workers sift through the debris.
The fire appears to have broken out in a building housing the ‘Teatre’ and ‘Fonda Milagros’ establishments in the city of Murcia in southeastern Spain.
“The fire spread from the upper parts of the two clubs, the Teatre and the Fonda Milagros… which originally were in the same building,” said a spokesman for the national police Diego Seral.
Authorities do not yet know where exactly the fire started.
Police have established a list of 15 people missing after the blaze, but Seral said that it was not yet final and could contain names of some of the victims already found.
“The Murcia fire brigade… will continue to secure the building for the next few hours. It cannot be ruled out that another body may be located,” the emergency service said shortly after 10pm.
They warned that there would be “no definitive toll until they have completed their work” scouring the rubble.
A man named Jairo who said he was the father of one of the victims told reporters that his 28-year-old daughter had been inside one of the clubs. He had no news of her since she left a desperate voice mail at 6.06am, he added.
“Mum, I love you, we’re going to die, I love you mum,” a young woman’s voice could be heard crying on the recording while in the background people shout to turn the lights on.
Emergency services said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that firefighters were continuing to work at the scene and had not ruled out “the possibility of finding more victims”.
Mayor of Murcia Jose Ballesta said the fire had broken out at around 6am local time and had been “extremely serious”. Emergency workers had so far pulled out 13 bodies from the ruins, a task complicated by the risk of the building collapsing, he told journalists. Three of the victims had been identified by their fingerprints. “The rest of the bodies will have to be identified by DNA”.
Firefighters dispatched to the scene at 7am were able to extinguish the fire by 8am, he added.
Officials said four people, two women aged 22 and 25 years old and two men in their forties, were treated for smoke inhalation.
