Eight killed in Ukraine hotel fire

KIEV: Eight people were killed and ten were injured in a hotel fire in Ukraine’s port city of Odessa on Saturday, emergency services said.

The fire broke out at 1.34 am (2234 GMT) in the southern city’s Tokyo Star hotel. Some 65 firefighters backed by 13 emergency vehicles put out the blaze three hours later. Emergency services said in a statement that eight people died and ten were injured.

In a statement on his Facebook page, President Volodymyr Zelensky said four of those injured were in a critical condition. Odessa authorities said around 150 people were evacuated from the area.

Police opened a criminal investigation into possible violations of fire safety requirements and the causes of the fire were being established. “We lost eight lives overnight,” Zelensky said on Facebook. Zelensky added he would “personally make sure” that those responsible are punished “in accordance with the norms of the law.”