Eight patients in an intensive care unit died after a fire erupted overnight in a state hospital in north-western Turkey, Health Minister Recep Akdag said Tuesday. Women holding babies wrapped in blankets were seen rushing out of the building in the city of Bursa, while a doctor pressed down frantically on the chest of a patient laying motionless on a stretcher, television images showed.
The blaze, believed to be sparked by an electrical fault in a basement compound, sent thick smoke through a ventilation shaft to upper floors before being put off, Akdag said in televised remarks after visiting the hospital. "The intensive care unit was affected worst by the smoke. Eight patients lost their lives either during the incident or maybe while being evacuated," he said, adding that inspectors were investigating the blaze.
Bursa Governor Sehabettin Harput cited smoke poisoning as a cause for the deaths, raising also the possibility that some patients, already in serious condition, might have died because electricity to their life support machines was cut, Anatolia news agency reported. The authorities were trying to establish whether the fire was the result of a technical glitch or due to "negligence," he said. The victims - five men and three women - perished in other hospitals where they were taken after the blaze.
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