Eleven people killed in fire at Japanese seniors welfare facility: NHK

[TOKYO] Eleven people were killed and five were rescued in a fire at a facility to support senior people on welfare in northern Japan late on Wednesday, public broadcaster NHK said.

The 16 elderly people were living in the three-storey wooden facility in Sapporo, where they paid a monthly rent of 36,000 yen (S$432.90), NHK said on Thursday.

Three of the survivors, aged between their fifties and eighties, were being treated in hospital but their condition was not life-threatening, the broadcaster said.

The facility is run by a Sapporo organisation that helps those who are on a public assistance by providing food and helping them find jobs, NHK said.

In March 2010, seven people at a nursing home for elderly people with dementia were killed in a fire in Sapporo, Kyodo news agency said.

REUTERS