Eleven people died and 19 others were injured when fire swept through a foster-care facility in Mohammadia, an eastern suburb of Algiers, Algerian authorities said. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said children were among the dead, although officials had not released the ages of those killed or hurt.
The country’s civil protection department said firefighters began tackling the blaze at about 03:30 local time, or 04:30 GMT. More than three hours later, crews were still trying to extinguish it when the department issued a public update. Ten fire engines and 16 ambulances were sent to the site. Authorities did not identify a cause.
A nearby resident, Abdessalam Merrah, said emergency vehicles arrived at around 03:00 as screams could be heard from the facility. He said neighbours tried to help but were then told that 11 people had already died. Five people with special needs were taken into care and moved to another safe location during the emergency, according to officials.
The fire occurred during a spell of intense heat in Algeria. Nearly 1,000 fires had been recorded across the country over one week, according to an AFP tally cited in the published account. On the morning of the facility fire, civil protection officials separately reported 115 wildfires during the previous 24 hours. The authorities did not, however, establish a connection between those conditions and the blaze in Mohammadia.
Tebboune called the deaths a tragic loss and offered condolences. Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb visited two hospitals in Algiers where injured people were receiving care, according to state media. An image published with that coverage showed him beside a child in a hospital bed.
The deaths led opposition politicians and social-media users to demand more information about how the fire started and whether safety failures contributed. The opposition Jil Jadid party called for a transparent investigation and for legal responsibility if negligence were found. No investigative conclusion or evidence of negligence had been announced in initial reporting.
The incident left several important questions unresolved, including the condition of individual survivors and the sequence by which occupants were evacuated. Official figures at the time remained 11 fatalities and 19 injuries. Any assessment of responsibility depended on the investigation into the fire’s origin and the facility’s safeguards, rather than on the wider pattern of fires reported during Algeria’s heatwave.
Mohammadia residents and opposition figures were seeking answers at a point when emergency work had only recently begun. The deployment numbers show the scale of the immediate response, but not whether equipment, staffing or evacuation procedures at the facility were adequate. Those questions required official examination after the site was made safe.
