Eight Die In Fire At Hotel In Ukraine's Odesa
Eight people died and 10 were injured in a fire early on August 17 in a private hotel in the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa, Ukraine's emergencies service said.
"Eight people died in the fire and 10 more were rescued," the service said in a statement.
In a statement on his Facebook page, President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said four of those injured were in critical condition
The fire occurred shortly after midnight, the statement said.
It gave no cause for the incident and did not say how many people had been staying at the hotel.
The Tokyo Star hotel has 273 rooms.
It took firefighters about three hours to extinguish the fire, which had raged over an area of about 1,000 square meters, the service said.
Odesa authorities said around 150 people were evacuated from the area.
An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the incident.
"We lost eight lives overnight," Zelenskiy said on Facebook. "And this is not due to war and shelling. It is because of criminal negligence, neglect of elementary safety standards and neglect towards human life."
Zelenskiy added he would "personally make sure" that those responsible are punished "in accordance with the norms of the law."