DAVAO, Philippines: Philippine firefighters have found all 37 bodies of employees of a US-based company who were trapped in a blaze that gutted a shopping mall in southern Davao city.
Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said that firefighters initially found one body at the NCCC Mall on Sunday, but that extreme heat and thick smoke prevented them from retrieving the bodies of the 36 other employees until Monday.
Senior Superintendent Wilberto Rico Neil Kwan Tiu, regional director of the Bureau of Fire Protection, relayed the news to the employees’ relatives, who broke into tears. They were told the bodies would be identified by authorities then turned over to their families.
All the dead were employees at a call center on the top floor of the four-story mall and run by US-based Research Now SSI, which employs about 500 people. Its chief executive officer, Gary Laben, said the company would help with funeral arrangements and create a fund for contributions for the victims’ families.
“This terrible tragedy has left us with heavy hearts,” Laben said.
Duterte-Carpio and Tiu spoke at a Mass outside the burned mall, where the fire broke out Saturday morning on the third floor, where clothes, appliances and furniture are sold. The fire started after a storm hit Davao and flooded parts of the city.
Except for a grocery store on the ground floor and the call center on the top floor, the shopping areas were still closed to the public when the fire started mid-morning, preventing a bigger tragedy amid the peak Christmas shopping season.
President Rodrigo Duterte went to the scene of the fire and met with relatives of the trapped office employees late Saturday. He served as Davao mayor for many years before being elected to the presidency last year.
Filipino firefighters find all 37 bodies of workers in mall
Filipino firefighters find all 37 bodies of workers in mall
US Treasury chief says retaliatory EU tariffs over Greenland ‘unwise’
- He said Trump wanted control of the autonomous Danish territory because he considers it a “strategic asset” and “we are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to anyone else.”
Davos: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned European nations on Monday against retaliatory tariffs over President Donald Trump’s threatened levies to obtain control of Greenland.
“I think it would be very unwise,” Bessent told reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
He said Trump wanted control of the autonomous Danish territory because he considers it a “strategic asset” and “we are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to anyone else.”
Asked about Trump’s message to Norway’s prime minister, in which he appeared to link his Greenland push to not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Bessent said: “I don’t know anything about the president’s letter to Norway.”
He added, however, that “I think it’s a complete canard that the president will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize.”
Trump said at the weekend that, from February 1, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden would be subject to a 10-percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States until Denmark agrees to cede Greenland.
The announcement has drawn angry charges of “blackmail” from the US allies, and Germany’s vice chancellor Lars Klingbeil said Monday that Europe was preparing countermeasures.
Asked later Monday on the chances for a deal that would not involve acquiring Greenland, Bessent said “I would just take President Trump at his word for now.”
“How did the US get the Panama Canal? We bought it from the French,” he told a small group of journalists including AFP.
“How did the US get the US Virgin Islands? We bought it from the Danes.”
Bessent reiterated in particular the island’s strategic importance as a source of rare earth minerals that are critical for a range of cutting-edge technologies.
Referring to Denmark, he said: “What if one day they were worried about antagonizing the Chinese? They’ve already allowed Chinese mining in Greenland, right?“
