Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced on Thursday that police had detained a man suspected of starting the Wednesday night fire in a Hanoi café that claimed eleven lives.
Following an altercation with employees, the man admitted, according to a police statement, to using gasoline to start a fire on the ground floor of the three-story cafe. The suspect is in his early 50s, according to the state-run Tien Phong newspaper. The police initially received notification of the fire on Wednesday, shortly after 11 p.m. (1600 GMT).
The fire blocked every exit. One witness told the Tien Phong paper, “There was a strong smell of gasoline,” and another said they heard an explosion. The police statement states that they took two of the seven people rescued from the fire to the hospital.
