THE NETHERLANDS: A fire killed 11 people and injured 15 at a detention centre at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport housing suspected drugs traffickers and illegal immigrants early yesterday.
Police were investigating allegations by the detainees that guards had initially not taken reports of a fire seriously.
"We were kept locked up. Our throats were hurting. We were kicking and screaming," an unnamed prisoner told Dutch television.
Jan Beekman, a senior military policeman, told a news conference that four of the 15 injured were still in hospital, while the others had been discharged. One person was seriously hurt.
Justice minister Piet Hein Donner, who visited the complex with immigration minister Rita Verdonk, said eight detainees were missing. Helicopters were used to search for them.
An airport spokeswoman said the fire, which began shortly after midnight and took several hours to bring under control, did not affect flights at Europe's fourth largest airport.
The fire raged through about a dozen two-person cells in the complex of prefabricated units.
A spokesman for the Netherlands Institute for Fire Service and Disaster Management (Nibra) told Dutch news agency ANP the organisation had found safety problems when it inspected the complex in 2002 before it went into use.
It recommended that the cells be made more fire-resistant but did not check to see whether this was done.
"That is not our legal obligation," the spokesman said.
Pictures on Dutch television showed flames engulfing several blocks and smoke pouring through windows as prisoners draped in blankets stood behind the high fence surrounding the complex, which is a few kilometres from the main airport buildings.
The Dutch Safety Board, an independent agency, said it was investigating the cause of the fire. ANP said this was the second fire at the complex.
A spokeswoman for the Dutch National Refugee Council, which has an office at the centre, criticised conditions there.
"The hallways were very narrow, and we were shocked to hear there was not one central system to unlock all the doors at once," she said.
The centre-right government has come under attack for its treatment of illegal immigrants and its plans to expel 26,000 failed asylum seekers, with several going on a hunger strike earlier this year to demand the closure of deportation centres.
The airport detention complex houses suspected drug traffickers and illegal immigrants awaiting expulsion.
About 300 people were being detained there at the time of the fire. Police said all the dead were detainees but could not yet give their nationalities. Mr Donner said it would take some time to identify the dead.
"I am shocked by a disaster of this magnitude. Our thoughts go out to the next of kin," prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende told ANP.