German Arson Probe after 3 Die in Refugee Home Blaze

German police launched an arson investigation Thursday after a fire in an asylum-seekers' home killed a Pakistani woman and her two young children.

Another 15 residents were hospitalized with smoke inhalation from the blaze that ripped through the five-story building in the northern port city of Hamburg on Wednesday night.

A spokesman for the firefighters, who battled the flames with about 100 personnel, described a "horror scenario", saying that "in almost every window there were screaming people who were shouting for help".

Although a technical defect could not be ruled out as the cause of the fire, police said they had launched an arson investigation and were asking for witnesses to the fire that started around 1900 GMT.

The victims of the blaze were a 33-year-old woman of Pakistani origin and her two sons, aged six and seven, who were on the top floor and succumbed to inhalation of the toxic smoke, police said.