House fire kills 5 migrants in Mecca

A fire Wednesday erupted in a house inhabited by migrant workers in Saudi Arabia’s western city of Mecca, killing five people, a civil defence official said.

Five others were injured in the house in Mecca’s district of Shara al-Mujahdeen, a spokesman for Mecca’s Civil Defence, Nayef al-Sherif, added in a media statement.

The fire first hit abandoned furniture and wood in the courtyard of the house and extended to a room where a family from Africa was living, al-Sherif said.

The blaze was later extinguished. Its cause was not immediately established.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has a large community of foreign workers.

The International Labour Organisation estimated that there are about nine million migrant workers as of April 2013.