At least 37 people, including several children, have been killed in a series of fires in the past 24 hours as India battles a brutal heatwave.
Seven newborn babies died after a children’s hospital caught fire in the national capital Delhi, while another fire in a residential complex in the city killed three people.
Delhi’s fire services said they received a call from Baby Care New Born Hospital in Vivek Vihar late on Saturday night and quickly sent nine fire trucks to the scene.
By the time the firefighters reached the hospital, one of the 12 babies admitted there had died. They rescued the others and took them to East Delhi Advance NICU Hospital for treatment, but six were declared dead on arrival.
The cause of the fire, which also affected an adjacent building, is not yet known.
“This incident of fire in a children’s hospital is heartbreaking,” Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said.
“Government and administration officials are busy providing treatment to the injured at the spot. The causes of the incident are being investigated and whoever is responsible for this negligence will not be spared.”
In the morning, the fire services were alerted to another fire in a residential building in East Delhi’s Krishna Nagar area.
“We received a call of fire at 2.35am from Krishna Nagar. The fire was doused at 7.20am. Five fire-tenders were rushed to the spot,” Delhi Fire Services chief Atul Garg told The Indian Express.
“A total of 13 people were rescued but three were declared dead.”
The fires in the capital came after a major blaze at an amusement park in the western state of Gujarat on Saturday that killed 27 people.
The park was filled with hundreds of visitors when the fire broke out.
“Plywood and other construction material lying in the area caught fire all of a sudden,” Yash Patoliya, a visitor at the park, told The Indian Express.
“The fire spread within seconds and sent people running helter-skelter.”
The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
India has been grappling with a brutal heatwave this summer that has seen temperatures soar above 45C in many places. Hotter and more extreme temperatures, in turn, have increased the risk of fires.
