At least 73 people were killed and dozens of others injured in Johannesburg on Thursday when a blaze tore through a building where squatters lived in dangerous conditions, city officials said, in one of the worst residential fires in South Africa’s history.

Authorities were still trying to determine what caused the blaze, which consumed a five-story downtown building that had become a dilapidated informal settlement where electric cables dangled in dark corridors and trash spilled from windows — a vivid illustration of a political crisis that has resulted in a severe lack of affordable housing in one of Africa’s most populous cities.

Officials said many residents were migrants from other African countries who relied on candles at night. Mgcini Tshwaku, a Johannesburg city council member
who oversees public safety, said when he arrived at the scene of the fire, people were jumping out of windows to escape.

By midmorning, the fire had been extinguished and firefighters were combing the structure floor by floor, searching for bodies.

At least seven children were among the dead, according to the city’s emergency services.

The blaze ranks among the deadliest residential fires in recent years.

The toll already exceeds that of the 2017 fire at London’s Grenfell Tower, which claimed 72 lives.

Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda of Johannesburg said the building was owned by the city, which had leased it to a non-profit organisation that provides emergency housing for women. But he said the non-profit had subsequently abandoned its operations there.

Residents of an apartment complex across the street described the building, which was once an apartheid government checkpoint for black workers, as a nightmare.

It had become a huge squatter camp in a city that is in the grip of a housing crisis.

New York Times News Service