News
Three Nigerians burnt to death in France
Three Nigerians have been reported dead in a fire incident in the French southern city of Marseille on Saturday.
The inferno was said to have broken out in a public housing building where immigrants from Nigeria are known to squat, French fire department officials said.
The report added that a two-year-old and an adult were also seriously injured in the fire at the building, while the three Nigerian men who died were undocumented migrants.
Marseille prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, said there was evidence of “at least two start points for the fire, one on the sixth floor and one in the stairwell”, suggesting the blaze was started deliberately.
The three dead men, according to Laurens, were aged 20 to 30, and were among five people who leapt from the windows of the burning 10-storey building, suggesting “total panic” at the sight of the burning stairwell.
READ ALSO: France fines Google €500m for unauthorised content usage
Going by reports on the fire outbreak, there could have been a fight between Nigerian drug dealers over a deal gone bad, leading to the fire.
Some residents of the building narrated how the drug dealers and other criminal gangs have been making life difficult for them.
“The dealers terrify us. They have weapons. They stop us sleeping,” a 30-year-old Nigerian, Azeke Endurance, said.
“There is a notorious drug dealing point here and there are tensions between the residents and the traffickers,” police chief Frederique Camilleri said, while Laurens said price lists for different drugs were scrawled on the walls in the stairwell.
Join the conversation
Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism
Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.
As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.
If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.
Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.
INVESTIGATION: In Kwara, multimillion-naira milk processing plant is abandoned, converted to a chicken outlet
After the government spent millions of naira to establish a milk processing plant in Kwara State that would provided jobs...
SPECIAL REPORT: For Sokoto communities, promise of healthcare is akin to death sentence
In this story, ABDULRASHEED HAMMAD delves into the dire realities of Primary Health Care services in Sokoto State, shedding light...
ICYMI…SPECIAL REPORT: NNPCL hides behind PIA to frustrate disclosure, accountability
Nigeria’s major oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), in what appears to be a common practice of disregard...
INVESTIGATION: Multi-million naira Ekiti resort center remains uncompleted a decade after
The multimillion-naira project, expected to comprise recreational buildings, now consists of cassava farmland, a bush used for excretion, and a...
SPECIAL REPORT: Torturous experiences of students with disabilities in Oyo tertiary institutions
For students with disabilities in Oyo state-owned tertiary institutions, learning is a torturous and distressing experience, considering the building structures...