A man has been arrested after admitting he was responsible for the fire that killed 77 people, including a dozen children, at a building in Johannesburg in September. This confirmed the possibility of arson, as we learned from the police on Wednesday.
“A suspect was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the fire in Marshalltown,” a central district of South Africa's economic capital, police spokesman Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said in a statement.
“The 29-year-old man was arrested after he admitted to a commission of inquiry that he was involved in starting the tragic fire,” Mr Nevhuhulwi added, without giving the reasons for his actions.
He will be charged with 76 counts of intentional homicide and 120 counts of attempted homicide, police said, adding that he must be brought to justice.
But according to South African media, according to the investigation, the suspect, whose identity has not been revealed, said that on the night of the fire he killed another man by beating and strangling him and that he was allegedly trying to commit his crime Covered up by setting fire to the body in the basement of the dilapidated apartment complex, The Independent reported Tuesday.
The fire, one of the deadliest in the world in the last twenty years, broke out overnight in early September in a four-story building in the disreputable and run-down center of Johannesburg.
During apartheid, Johannesburg was an opulent business district. In the now neglected city center there are many abandoned buildings that often fell into the hands of slumlords.
In this building, which housed around 200 families, including many migrants, there was panic among the trapped residents and many bodies were found behind locked gates. Witnesses reported seeing babies being thrown out of windows.
The fire caused an international stir.