Three elderly patients died in a fire in an Austrian hospital near Vienna on Tuesday, the local health authorities reported.
The flames broke out in the early hours of Tuesday in a ward on the third floor of the Landesklinikum Mödling hospital near Vienna.
Investigators assume it was caused by a cigarette. Help arrived too late to save the three men on the ward, Matthias Hofer, spokesman for the provincial health agency (LGA), told the APA news agency.
According to a police spokesman, the traces indicated that the smouldering fire started from the bed of a 75-year-old patient who was known to be a heavy smoker. A technical defect as the cause of the fire was not found, they said.
The man and the two other patients in the ward, aged 78 and 81, died. One woman suffered minor injuries. Originally, the LGA had assumed that about 20 people were slightly injured.
The fire alarm went off at 1 am (00:00 GMT). "This fire must have spread very rapidly with great intensity through the room. The entire ward was full of smoke within a brief period," Hofer told broadcaster ORF.
The fire services deployed 170 firefighters, who doused the fire and completed their work after around two hours.
Some 90 patients had to be transferred, and operations at the hospital were cancelled for the day.
The Landesklinikum Mödling has almost 340 beds and treats some 34,000 outpatients each year.
