Fire, Deaths | featured news

More than 100 people who rushed to scoop up fuel after a Nigerian petrol tanker tipped over Thursday were killed when the vehicle and pools of spilled oil caught fire. Children were among those killed, while dozens more were badly burned, despite a warning from troops who arrived at the crash site that a blaze could ignite at any moment.

Nineteen people, including 13 children, died Monday in a fire that raged through an upscale shopping mall in Doha, Qatar’s Interior Ministry said. The fire started late in the morning and centered on a children’s play area in the Villaggio Mall, a glittering collection of shops and indoor canals in Doha, the capital, frequented by expatriates in the oil-rich emirate. The ministry did not immediately provide the nationalities of those killed. Local news reports said no Qatari children were among the dead, and Reuters said four of the children who died in the fire were from Spain. French media reported that one French child died in the fire.

A fire tore through a two-story home that had no functioning smoke detectors Saturday in West Virginia's capital city, killing eight family members, including six children, the city's mayor said. Charleston Mayor Danny Jones said he believed it was the city's deadliest fire in at least six decades. Jones said only one smoke detector was found in a cabinet, and it was not working.

South Plainfield mayor Matthew Anesh says smoke alarms were not working in a portion of a home when a fire killed five members of a family -- four of them children.

A fast-burning fire destroyed half of a duplex home early Thursday, killing five members of a family and injuring four others, authorities said.

A forensic official in Honduras says a fire that swept through a prison has killed at least 272 inmates.

A woman burned to death in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building Saturday after a man ambushed her, sprayed her with liquid and set her afire with a Molotov cocktail, police said. The unidentified man was waiting for the woman, who was in her 60s, when the elevator doors opened to her floor of the Prospect Heights building. The man sprayed her with an accelerant and set her on fire, New York City police spokesman Paul Browne said.

A 15-year-old boy poured gasoline throughout his home and set it ablaze Wednesday, killing his adoptive father and two brothers, police said. Michael Pilato was charged with second-degree murder and arson, hours after the early morning fire at his two-story home in Webster, a Rochester suburb.

Fire officials say six people, including four children, have died in a house fire in northeast Ohio. Shane Cartmill of the state fire marshal's office says the dead include two adults, their two children and two other children who were visiting.

A Houston day care owner is among the U.S. Marshals "most wanted," more than a week after authorities say she carelessly started a fire that killed four children and then fled.