Twelve people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed when fire ravaged a dormitory for pupils in the southern Turkish region of Adana, local officials said.
The fire rushed through the three-floor building’s wooden interior as panicked targets tried to jump to safety from windows.
Officials said an electric fault was probably to blame. They expressed concern that a few of the girls who perished had not been able to open a fire door that was closed to escape the top floors.
“We lost 12 of our citizens in the fire. Eleven of them were schoolchildren and one was a tutor. Twenty-two citizens are injured,” Adana region governor Mahmut Demirtas told Turkish NTV television.
“According to initial findings we believe the fire was caused by electrical fault.”
