Refugees die in South African blaze

 By Violet Gonda
  30 March 2006

South African television is reporting that a number of people died in a fire that broke out in a central Johannesburg building Wednesday. It’s feared that several of the dead are Zimbabwean.

Approximately forty others are reported to have been injured in the blaze which began early in the morning in an abandoned factory, where many illegals were sleeping.

This is the second time this month that Zimbabwean have died in South Africa following violent clashes amongst refugees sheltering in a Methodist Church that left two people dead.

Vice Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Diaspora CSO forum, Sox Chikohwero, said that most of the people died when there was a panic stampede to escape the building.

Initially South African emergency services spokesman Malcolm Midgley told journalists in Johannesburg that they had recovered 12 bodies and that they had died from traumatic asphyxia.

Describing the horrific scenes at the building Midgley said some of the victims who died in the inferno appeared to have been pushed against a locked security gate in the rush to get out.

‘One of the bodies had the imprint of the security gate on his skin. For those imprints to have remained on him for several hours, you can imagine the pressure with which he was squeezed against it,’ he said.

The injured were taken to hospital, some of them severely hurt. A task force of Zimbabwe civic organisations has been set up and will work with emergency services in South Africa to try and identify and comfort the injured and survivors.