More than 70 reported dead in fire in South Africa’s Johannesburg

Emergency services say death toll may rise as blaze guts multistorey building in central business district.

A nighttime fire ripped through a rundown five-story building in Johannesburg that was occupied by squatters and homeless people, killing at least 73 people, emergency services in South Africa’s biggest city said.

Some of the people living in a maze of shacks and other makeshift structures inside the building threw themselves out of windows on Thursday to escape the fire and might have died then, a local government official said. Seven of the victims were children, the youngest a one-year-old, according to an emergency services spokesperson.