Butuan (Philippines): Seventeen shop staff sleeping in a Philippines’ department store were killed when a fire swept through the building before dawn on Wednesday, local authorities said.
Twenty-one female employees were trapped in the fire, with one person still missing and three surviving by jumping from a second-storey window, the provincial fire department said.
Eleven bodies were recovered soon after the fire was put out, Chief Inspector Mario Palarca told AFP. Investigators later found six other corpses, one of his aides said.
Saleswoman Vicky Belez, one of the survivors, said she only survived because she was in the bathroom when the fire broke out. “I was in the bathroom. There was a lot of smoke and the flames were already huge,” the 21-year-old said as doctors treated her burned arms. (AFP)
