A fire at Nairobi’s Gikomba market yesterday killed 15 people, a government official said, less than a year after a blaze destroyed much of the Kenyan capital’s largest open-air market.
“We have lost 15 people from this tragedy this morning,” Nairobi regional coordinator Kangethe Thuku said.
“We’re yet to establish the cause of this fire,” he said, which is believed to have started in a timber yard.
Photo: Reuters
The predawn blaze left more than 70 people injured, and destroyed many of the market’s wood and tarp stalls that sell second-hand clothes, shoes and vegetables on the eastern side of the capital city.
A police officer at the scene said emergency services were continuing to search the area.
“We are still trying to get to some corner [of the market] which has heavy smoke, because part of the area has not been accessed due to live electric wires,” the police officer said.
Witnesses heard explosions as gas canisters were swept up in the inferno.
Nine of the dead were in an apartment block next to the market, while six others — including four children — died of their injuries in hospital.
A large fire destroyed much of the market in October last year.
In May 2014, 10 people died in a bombing at the market blamed on militant group al-Shabaab.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS