At least 73 people have been confirmed dead in an inferno that ravaged a five storey building at the Corner of Alberts and Delvers street in the Johannesburg CBD. The fire reportedly broke out on the first floor of the hijacked building around 1:30 am this morning. Out of the 73 fatalities, seven victims are children with the youngest being a year old.

AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT INSIDE A BUILDING

Johannesburg Emergency Management Services spokesperson Robert Mulauzdi described the building as an ’informal settlement’ hijacked building.

"From the outside, the building looks normal, but inside, there are partitions on each and every floor, which makes it look like shacks inside. We have to go through all the debris inside the building, floor by floor to make sure that we can be able to recover more bodies," Mulaudzi said.

FIREFIGHTERS BUSY WITH RESCUE AND RECOVERY OPERATION

So far, Mulaudzi says, 52 injured people were rescued from the building and they are were being transported to different health facilities around the city for further medical care. "Firefighters have been hard at work at the building conducting rescue and recovery operations," he said. "We are focusing on making sure that we rescue and make recoveries in all the five floors after that we will hand over the scene to the SAPS for investigation," he said addng, that there are a number of buildings that have been hijacked in the city and that they are hoping that there will measures taken to avoid such incidents in future. Mulaudzi said it was likely that the fire was started by illegal connections.