TOKYO: At least 27 people were feared dead after a fire swept through a psychiatry clinic in the Japanese city of Osaka on Friday, and media said police were investigating suspected arson.
Some 27 people were in cardiopulmonary arrest, an official at Osaka’s city fire department told Reuters, the term used in Japan before a death is officially confirmed. Another person was injured, the official said.
Nine people were confirmed dead at hospital, broadcaster TV Asahi said.
Police were investigating suspected arson, including reports that a man started the fire in the building, Kyodo News said, citing people involved in the investigation.
An elderly man brought a bag into the building that leaked flammable liquid and was ignited, the Yomiuri newspaper said. The man was believed to be a patient at the clinic, the Mainichi newspaper said.
The fire broke out shortly after the clinic, on the fourth floor of a multi-story office building, opened for business at 10 a.m. (0100 GMT) and was largely extinguished within 30 minutes, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Video from NHK showed smoke pouring out of the fourth-floor windows, and the roof. Footage later showed smoldering windows, blackened and charred.
“When I looked outside I saw orange flames in the fourth-floor window of the building. A woman was waving her hands for help from the sixth floor window,” a 36-year-old woman who works at a company nearby told Kyodo.
Located in a shopping and entertainment district not far from Osaka’s main train station, the building also houses a beauty salon, a clothes shop and an English-language school, NHK said.
Another woman who said she saw smoke coming from the window told Kyodo that power briefly went out in the surrounding area.
An arson attack at an animation studio in the city of Kyoto in 2019 killed more than 30 people and injured dozens. (Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Rocky Swift, Sakura Murakami and Makiko Yamazaki Writing by Chang-Ran Kim, Jane Wardell and David Dolan; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Robert Birsel)
At least 27 people feared dead in blaze at clinic in Japan
https://arab.news/m8qe6
At least 27 people feared dead in blaze at clinic in Japan
- Nine people were confirmed dead at hospital, broadcaster TV Asahi said
- The fire broke out shortly after the clinic, on the fourth floor of a multi-story office building
Trump invites Colombia’s Petro to White House after earlier threat of military action
- Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025
WASHINGTON/BOGOTA: Days after threatening Colombia with military action, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said arrangements were being made for the country’s President Gustavo Petro to visit the White House, following a call between the two leaders. Trump and Petro said they discussed relations between the two countries in their first call since the US president on Sunday said that a US military operation focused on Colombia’s government “sounds good” to him. That threat followed Trump ordering the US capture of the president of neighboring Venezuela, who was flown to the US to face drug and weapons charges.
“It was a great honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had. I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump added “arrangements are being made” for a meeting in Washington between himself and Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, but gave no specific date for a meeting.
“We have spoken by phone for the first time since he became president,” Petro told supporters gathered at a rally in Bogota meant to celebrate Colombia’s sovereignty, adding he had requested a restart of dialogue between the two countries.
A source in Petro’s office told Reuters the call was “cordial” and “respectful.”
Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025.
Trump has repeatedly accused the administration of Petro, without evidence, of enabling a steady flow of cocaine into the US, imposing sanctions on the Colombian leader in October.
On Sunday Trump referred to Petro as “a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
The US in September had revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York following a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and called on US soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump.”
Petro, who has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, had accused Trump of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and called for “criminal proceedings” over US missile attacks on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.
The Trump administration has carried out more than 30 strikes against suspected drug boats since September, in a campaign that has killed at least 110 people.
