17 dead in Philippine department store fire

BUTUAN: Seventeen shop staff sleeping in a Philippines department store were killed when a fire swept through the building before dawn on Wednesday, local authorities said.

Twenty-one female employees were trapped in the fire, with one person still missing and three surviving by jumping from a second-storey window, the provincial fire department said.

Eleven bodies were recovered soon after the fire was put out, Chief Inspector Mario Palarca told.

Investigators later found six other corpses, one of his aides said.

"Twenty-one people were asleep on the second floor when the fire struck the ground floor. They could not find the emergency exit because of the huge volume of black smoke," Palarca said by telephone.

Saleswoman Vicky Belez, one of the survivors, said she only survived because she was in the bathroom when the fire broke out.

Cashier Mylene Tolo, 22, said she narrowly made it out despite the blinding smoke and large flames, which left her with scorched arms.

The fire occurred in a three-storey department store in Butuan, a city of 300,000 people on the southern island of Mindanao.

It is common in the Philippines for people in low-paid jobs to sleep at their place of work.

The store's assistant supervisor, Berlita Ballestero, said there was only one emergency door linked to the employees' living quarters.

Loren Catedral, operations officer at the civil defence office in Butuan told the blaze started on the ground floor of the building. (AFP)