Fire kills five at Spanish retirement home

Fire ripped through a retirement home in a suburb of Valencia, Spain early on Wednesday, killing five residents, emergency services said.

The blaze started around midnight and took around two hours to come under control, the fire department said on its Twitter feed.

Around 70 residents were evacuated from the home in Moncada, a northern suburb of Valencia, Spain's third largest city. The home has rooms for 100 people.

Eleven people were transferred to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, emergency services said.

The cause of the fire was being investigated by the fire department and police.

"First clues, according to what they told me, point at two possibilities: an electric failure possibly linked to an oxygen bottle or a neglect from a resident who was smoking," town councillor and firefighter Martin Perez Aranda told 24H TV.

He said most of the residents of the burned area were relocated in spare space in the home and will be evacuated to other homes in the region during the day.