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Fire Kills 11 At Four-Star Hotel In Karachi


Pakistani firefighters look from a room of the Regent Plaza Hotel where bedsheets were tied together by guests in an effort to escape the flames.
Pakistani firefighters look from a room of the Regent Plaza Hotel where bedsheets were tied together by guests in an effort to escape the flames.

Fire has swept through a four-star hotel in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, killing at least 11 people.

Police in Karachi say four of those killed by the blaze at Karachi’s Regent Plaza hotel were women and that smoke inhalation or suffocation caused some of the deaths.

More than 75 people also suffered injuries in the early morning blaze on December 5.

Among them were foreigners who were being treated for burns and smoke inhalation and others who suffered broken bones after jumping from hotel windows to escape.

TV footage showed some guests escaping from the upper floors of the building by tying bedsheets together and climbing down from windows.

The exact cause of the fire was not immediately determined, but authorities said it started in the hotel's ground-floor kitchen.

Based on reporting by AP and Dawn.com

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