Three patients were killed and many people were injured, two of them critically, in a fire that broke out overnight at a hospital in the German city of Hamburg, authorities said Sunday.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the hospital, the Marienkrankenhaus, shortly after midnight. It broke out in a room in the geriatric ward, on the ground floor of the building, and spread to the facade of the floor above. Smoke spread across the building's four floors.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the fire.
The fire department said that three adult patients were killed and more than 50 people injured, the German news agency dpa reported. Of those, two were in life-threatening condition, 16 had serious injuries and 36 were slightly hurt.
A section of the hospital had to be evacuated. Injured patients were treated either at the hospital itself or in nearby clinics. The fire was extinguished within about 20 minutes.
