At least six residents of a senior center have died after a fire broke out in a building in Milan, northern Italy.

At around 01:20 this Friday, the emergency was reported at the center which houses 167 people. “Six people died and many others, poisoned (by smoke), were hospitalized. Firefighters rescued dozens of residents,” the firefighters said in a tweet.

The six deceased were between 69 and 97 years old, according to the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.

“Between the smoke and the problems for the elderly to move around, it was a very difficult time,” he explained to television. local team Fire Chief Nicola Micele of Milan.

A photographer from the AFP he saw two corpses being taken away on stretchers. Members of the technical and scientific police inspected the site.

A dozen ambulances, fire trucks and a funeral car were parked near the building.

The mayor of the city, Giuseppe Sala, went to the scene of the incident. “The fire is believed to have started in a room in which two residents were scorched to death,” he said.

The other deceased, a man and three women, died of poisonous smoke inhalation.

A person in charge of the fire service, Carlo Cardinali, told the AFP that 81 people have been hospitalized, two of them in serious condition.

“We still don’t know what caused the fire,” he added.