A fire at a nursing home on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi killed more than a dozen people, with three others injured, a local official said Monday.

Firefighters received the report of the blaze at 8:31pm Sunday at a nursing home in the North Sulawesi provincial capital Manado, said the city’s fire and rescue agency chief Jimmy Rotinsulu.

“There were 16 deaths; three (people) had burn injuries,” he told AFP.

Many bodies of the victims were found inside their rooms, Jimmy said, adding that many of the elderly residents were likely resting in their rooms in the evening when the fire broke out.

Authorities managed to evacuate 12 people — all unhurt — and transfer them to a local hospital, he said.

Footage aired by local broadcaster Metro TV showed the fire engulfing the nursing home, while locals helped to evacuate an elderly person.

Deadly fires are not uncommon in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of more than 17,000 islands.

A fire tore through a seven-storey office building in Indonesia´s capital Jakarta this month, killing at least 22 people.

In 2023, at least 12 people were killed in the country´s east after an explosion at a nickel-processing plant.

• NCP chief says final list of candidates to be announced on Monday.
• Tasnim Jara, several other leaders quit NCP in protest.
• Critics of NCP’s move say it undermined party’s founding ideals.
  

DHAKA: The student-led Bangladeshi party born out of the protest movement that toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has forged an electoral alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami ahead of February’s parliamentary election, stirring internal rifts.

Since last year’s uprising, the National Citizen Party (NCP) has cast itself as a centrist, reformist alternative to nepotism and two-party dominance, but as the election nears, it is struggling to turn street power into voter support.

NCP chief Nahid Islam said on Sunday the party had decided to enter into the alliance for greater unity, adding that the final list of candidates would be announced on Monday. Other NCP figures have described the alliance as a pragmatic step in a fragmented political landscape.

But the decision to join forces with JI has already prompted internal ructions.

Tasnim Jara, a doctor who left a career in Britain to join the NCP, becoming a leader in the party, resigned on Saturday and said she would contest the election as an independent candidate. Several other members have also quit.

BNP regains momentum 

Critics of the NCP’s move said it undermined the party’s founding ideals.

“The moral support I had for the NCP will no longer exist due to this ideological mismatch,” said one university student, asking not to be named.

The partnership comes amid broader political realignments, with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) — aligned with ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and effectively led by her son, acting chair Tarique Rahman — regaining momentum following Rahman’s return after nearly 17 years in exile.

The February 12 election will be held under an interim administration headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took charge after Hasina’s ouster and is seen as crucial to restoring political stability after nearly two years of turmoil.

A row over the disappearance of a famous river surfing wave in Munich escalated on Sunday as authorities removed a beam inserted over Christmas to recreate the attraction.

The Eisbach wave on a side branch of the Isar River had been a landmark in the Bavarian city since the 1980s but it vanished in October after annual cleanup work along the riverbed.

Activists had placed a beam in the water early on December 25 to partially recreate the wave, according to German media reports, and hung a banner above the water that read “Merry Christmas”.

But a spokesman for the Munich fire service told AFP the “installation was removed” on Sunday at the request of city authorities.

Activists have made several attempts to reinstate the wave in the city’s Englischer Garten park since October — only to see them reversed.

The local surfers’ association IGSM on Thursday posted a statement on its website saying it had abandoned its campaign to save the wave, accusing city authorities of dragging their feet.

The Eisbach wave was considered the largest and most consistent river wave in the heart of a major city and had become a tourist attraction in Bavaria’s state capital.

Franz Fasel, head of the IGSM, told AFP in July that 3,000 to 5,000 local surfers were using it.

Access to the wave was cut off for several months earlier this year after the death of a 33-year-old Munich woman who became trapped under the surface while surfing at night.