A fire early on Friday swept through the sleeping quarters of an academy for Brazil’s popular professional soccer club Flamengo, killing 10 people and injuring three, most likely teenage players, authorities said.
Firefighters were called just after 5am to the sprawling Ninho de Urubu training grounds in Rio de Janeiro’s western region.
“We are distraught,” Flamengo president Rodolfo Landim said outside the complex, where friends, fans and neighbors gathered, some in prayer. “This is the worst tragedy to happen to the club in its 123 years.”
Photo: AP
He did not take questions from reporters who also were outside the complex, but added: “The most important thing right now is to minimize the suffering of these families.”
The cause of the fire was not known, but Rio de Janeiro state Vice Governor Claudio Castro said authorities were looking at the possibility of a short circuit in an air conditioning unit.
In a statement, the city said the area that burned was registered for parking, not as a dormitory, adding that an investigation into the licensing process was under way.
Photo: AFP
Sebastian Rodriguez, the uncle of one of the players who died, 15-year-old Samuel Thomas Rosa, said his nephew never complained about the conditions.
“He never told me anything bad about the training center,” Rodriguez said. “He liked the environment and his teammates there.”
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Marcelo Crivella ordered three days of mourning, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro issued a statement lamenting the fire had taken “the young lives at the beginning of pursuing their professional dreams.”
Passion for soccer runs deep in Brazil, and as news of the tragedy spread, many of the world’s best players and top officials expressed condolences.
“It’s a sad day for Brazilian soccer,” tweeted Pele, the country’s most famous player.
Flamengo is perhaps the most famous club in the country, with an estimated 40 million fans nationwide.
Supporters are so attached to their academy team that players have a motto for them: “Flamengo makes legends at home.”
Among the most famous players to come through the club are Ronaldinho and Zico, former stars on Brazil’s national team; top goal-scorer Adriano, who rose to fame at Inter Milan; and current Real Madrid star Vinicius Jr, who not long ago was living in the building destroyed by the fire.
The identities of those killed were not released but their names emerged through family members and survivors.
Rio de Janeiro state Public Health Secretary Beatriz Busch said two of the injured were in stable condition while a third was in critical condition.
The ages of the injured were 14, 15 and 16, according to a fire official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of agency rules.
Samuel Barbosa, 16-year-old who survived the fire, told Globo TV news that a lot of smoke filled the dorm.
“Most didn’t make it because there was so much fire,” Barbosa said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema