No foul play behind fatal summer fire

A series of investigations have shown that there was no malicious intent behind a fire that claimed the lives of seven people in a Stockholm suburb this summer.

• Rinkeby fire claims seventh victim (28 Jul 09)
• Six die in Stockholm apartment fire (26 Jul 09)

Three separate investigations have all reached the conclusion that the deaths of a mother, her five daughters, and a teenage girl occurred after a lamp caught fire in a bedroom in an apartment on the ground floor of a block of flats. The Somali family killed in the blaze lived on the fifth floor.

The investigations - carried out by the police, the National Laboratory of Forensic Science, and the Swedish Accident Investigation Board - each concluded that the fire broke out when a piece of cloth fell over a lamp, causing it burn and eventually short circuit.

Investigators believe this is the only credible explanation for the fire.

Once the fire broke out, it spread to other objects in the bedroom, which was unoccupied. By the time the residents realised what was happening the blaze had already taken full hold.

"The occupants were force to evacuate the apartment as quickly as they could. When the firemen arrived at the scene the apartment was ablaze," police spokesman Mats Eriksson told the TT news agency.

Prosecutors have now dropped the case in light of the investigations' findings.

The fire broke out late in the evening of July 20th in a ground floor apartment in Rinkeby in north-west Stockholm. The occupants of the apartment ravaged by the blaze managed to leave the building.

But higher up in the building, a Somali mother, her five young children and a teenage girl all died of smoke inhalation in the stairwell while trying to flee the building.