Fire at centre for disabled people kills 14
One report says fire followed a loud explosion in storage room of the workshop run by Caritas
A fire broke out yesterday at a workshop for disabled people in southwestern Germany, killing at least 14 people, authorities said.
The centre, in Titisee-Neustadt, a town in the Black Forest near the city of Freiburg, employs some 120 people with either mental of physical disabilities in a variety of jobs including metalwork, woodwork and electrical installation, according to the facility's website.
There are usually 100 to 120 people in the building at any one time, police spokesman Karl-Heinz Schmid told Suedwestrundfunk radio.
The facility is run by the Catholic Church's Caritas organisation.
The town's mayor Armin Hinterseh said the center's buildings were quite new. "It is devastating. We now have to find out how it happened," he was quoted as saying by local daily Badische Zeitung.
Schmid told rolling news channel N24: "We can tell you that we have 14 dead. The process of identification is ongoing."
"We also have a large number of injured who have been taken to hospital," said Schmid, adding it was too early to determine how serious the injuries were.