Six people were killed when a fire broke out at a construction site in central Brussels on Tuesday, according to the law enforcement authorities investigating the cause of the blaze.
The dead have not yet been identified, the authorities said. The building was not yet permanently occupied, and only construction workers were believed to be on site.
Firefighters were alerted to the fire on the second floor of the Oxy building at 7:50 a.m. local time, said Walter Derieuw, a spokesman for the fire department of Brussels.
The planned mixed-use building was to house offices, apartments and a hotel. The fire appeared to have spread through the elevator shaft to lower floors and was extinguished in a little over an hour, Mr. Derieuw said.
Six bodies were discovered in one of six elevators in the building, said Brecht Speybrouck, the labor auditor of Brussels. Investigators with the labor prosecutor’s office are looking into the cause of the blaze.
Two construction workers suffered burns and were taken to hospitals in Brussels and Leuven and a firefighter was also hospitalized for heatstroke and later discharged, Mr. Derieuw added.
About 200 workers at the site were evacuated.
Immobel, one of the real estate developers behind the project, said in a statement that it was cooperating with authorities. “This is, above all, a human tragedy for all of us,” the company said.
The over-200-foot-tall tower was known as Centre Monnaie before its redesign and is noteworthy for its iconic, cross-shaped form.
