Fire kills at least 10, including 5 children

A fire tore through an apartment building in the early hours of Friday near Lyon in central France, killing at least 10 people, including five children, French authorities said. Over 160 firefighters and more than 60 fire engines responded to the blaze, which started around 3 a.m. in a seven-floor building in Vaulx-en-Velin, a northeastern suburb of Lyon, the prefecture for the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region said in a statement.

Four people were also seriously hurt in the blaze, and 10 others, including two firefighters, suffered lighter injuries, the prefecture said. Firefighters managed to extinguish the fire, which started from the ground floor and spread up, filling the building’s communal areas with noxious smoke. Authorities said that it was not immediately clear how the blaze had started.

Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said the children killed in the fire were ages 3 to 15. Several of the people who were injured are still “between life and death,” and not all of the victims’ bodies have been identified, he added.

Accidental president fails to quell violent protests in impoverished rural areas

It might be the world’s shortest political honeymoon. Almost since the moment last week when Dina Boluarte took over from the ousted leader Pedro Castillo to become Peru’s first female president, she has appealed for calm and a chance to govern, insisting that the caretaker job came to her out of circumstance, not personal ambition.

In impoverished rural areas, though, fierce protests are showing no signs of abating amid anger over the removal of Castillo, who was Peru’s first president with Indigenous heritage. Long overlooked peasant farmers and others remain unwilling to give up on their demand that he be released from prison, where he is being held while under investigation for rebellion.

— The Associated Press

Suspected crush at concert leaves three people critically injured

Three people remained in critical condition Friday after suffering injuries believed to have been caused by a crush the night before during a packed London concert at one of Britain’s leading music venues, the capital’s police force said.

A large crowd tried to force its way into the concert, a sold-out performance Thursday evening by Asake, a Nigerian Afrobeats singer and songwriter, at the venue, the O2 Academy Brixton, prompting the emergency services to respond and forcing the concert to end early.

Video from the scene showed crowds surging through the venue’s main entrance as cheers and screams rang out through the throng of fans stretched out into the main road, as well as police struggling to maintain control even as they wielded batons. “This is so dangerous,” one person can be heard saying.

— The New York Times