Hundreds flee as fire rips through German nightclub

BERLIN — Hundreds of people were evacuated from a nightclub in southwest Germany after a fire broke out, police said Sunday, with images from the scene showing the blaze raging on the building's roof.

Police said the fire began around 3:45 am (0145 GMT) in the nightclub in Kehl, which is on the border with France.

The blaze went on to "spread over the whole building," a police statement added.

All of the roughly 750 people inside at the time were able to escape, with three people treated by emergency services.

Images published in German media showed a huge fire on the roof of the nightclub, which is located in an industrial area of the city.

In a statement, Kehl's mayor Wolfram Britz said he was "happy and relieved that nobody was hurt" and thanked the nightclub owner for ensuring an orderly evacuation.

Firefighters were on the scene into Sunday afternoon, with remnants of the fire being put out in the interior of the nightclub.

City authorities said the damage was so extensive that most of the building had to be torn down.

The blaze came months after a bar in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana caught fire in the early hours of New Year's Day, killing 41 people.

Kehl lies directly across the Rhine River from the French city of Strasbourg, and the club regularly attracts visitors from across the border.

Unlike in the Crans-Montana fire, in Kehl the evacuation process seems to have gone smoothly.

"All of a sudden we heard: there's a fire! There were several announcements in German, French and English," a reveler told the local French newspaper DNA.

The paper quoted clubbers as saying the staff "handled it really well" and that the evacuation was "very quick".

An investigation has been opened into the fire, the cause of which was not immediately clear. — Agence France-Presse