A fire engulfed an apartment building in Valencia in eastern Spain and left at least four persons dead and 15 others missing.
Television footage showed the building’s facade ablaze with burning segments falling to the pavement and small explosions audible inside.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez rushed to the area after expressing support for those affected and praising firefighters. The fire began on Thursday evening on the fourth floor of the building in an affluent neighbourhood of Spain’s third-largest city and spread to other apartments, emergency services said.
Valencia’s mayor, Maria Jose Catala, said four people had been confirmed dead and from nine to 15 were missing.
Jorge Suarez, deputy head of emergency services in the Valencia region, said there appeared no risk of the structure collapsing for now, but firefighters were operating from outside.
Tackling the fire inside was not immediately possible, and the firefighters were first trying to cool the facade, he said.
The building had 14 floors with hundreds of apartments, local media said.
Pilar Bernabe, government representative for the region of Valencia, said it was hard to say how many people were missing because it was “a building with many flats, flats in which there were people of foreign nationality, whose location is more difficult to pinpoint.”
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