Eleven Asian workers, most of them Indians, died in a fire that broke out in a cramped hostel in Dubai while they were asleep, reports said on Wednesday. Another six workers were injured in the dawn blaze on Tuesday, newspapers in the United Arab Emirates said.
Dubai deputy police chief General Khamis al-Mazeina told Gulf News that the hostel in the Naif old quarter of the city state had been divided up into dormitories each sleeping as many as 25 workers. He said the crowded conditions had been an aggravating factor although the cause of the fire had yet to be established.