A fire Wednesday erupted in a house inhabited by migrant workers in Saudi Arabia’s western city of Mecca, killing five people, a civil defense 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.
NAN reports that the International Labour Organization estimated that there are about nine million migrant workers as of April 2013.
