At least 24 people were yesterday killed after a blaze gutted a mental health clinic in a commercial building in Osaka, Japan, local media said, with police reportedly considering the incident a possible arson.
The charred interior of the clinic was visible through blackened and broken window frames as firefighters put up tarpaulins to block the scene from view following the fire that broke out mid-morning and raged for half an hour on the narrow block’s fourth floor.
“The municipal fire department is investigating the cause of the fire. I have received a report that Osaka police is investigating the fire as a possible arson,” Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura wrote on Twitter.
Photo: AFP
Japanese media said a man in his 50s or 60s had allegedly dispersed a liquid to start the blaze.
A young woman who witnessed the fire told public broadcaster NHK she had seen a woman trapped on the fourth floor.
“She leaned out [from a window] and was saying things like ‘please help’... She seemed very weak. Maybe she inhaled lots of smoke,” the woman said.
Osaka, a major economic hub, is Japan’s second-biggest metropolis after the greater Tokyo region.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered his “sincere condolences” to the victims and sympathy to those injured in the incident.
“We must get to the bottom of this horrible case. We must clarify the cause and how it happened, and we must take measures to prevent the same thing from happening again,” he said.
Dozens of fire engines rushed to the scene of the blaze, which occurred in a busy business area near Kitashinchi Station.
Most of the eight-story structure’s exterior remained intact after the fire, with about 20m2 reportedly burned in the blaze.
“There was lots of dark smoke ... there was a very strong smell, too,” a middle-aged woman told NHK at the scene.
Fuji TV reported that most of those who died in the fire were believed to have had carbon monoxide poisoning.
One year ago, a man was charged with murder over a 2019 arson attack on a Kyoto animation studio that killed 36 people, the country’s deadliest violent crime in decades.
A 2008 arson attack on a video shop in Osaka killed 16 people. The attacker is on death row.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS