Blaze Kills 77 in Indonesian Shopping Mall

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Firefighters carried at least 77 bodies out of the smoking ruins of a shopping mall Friday after battling for 12 hours to put out the blaze.

The fire that broke out before dawn Thursday was the fifth and deadliest to strike the Kebon Kembang shopping mall in Bogor, 40 miles south of the capital, Jakarta, in nine years.

Most of the victims are believed to be female employees of a third-floor department store who had come in early to take inventory.

The extent of the casualties became clear only Friday after firefighters extinguished the blaze 12 hours after it broke out and sifted through the rubble for many more hours before finding bodies.

Seventy-seven plastic bags containing bodies or body parts were taken from the mall to the Indonesian Red Cross Hospital, said Wahyu, a chief sergeant at Bogor police station who uses only one name.

Dedy Subandi, a forensic official at the Red Cross hospital, said the exact toll may be difficult to pin down because many bodies were charred beyond recognition. And some of the bags contained more than one body.

“At this time, only 11 of the bodies may be able to be identified,” he said in a telephone interview from Bogor.

Eleven people who suffered serious burns were being treated in other hospitals.

Wahyu said firefighters were still searching for more victims. At least 100 employees were believed to be in the Ramayana store--part of the country’s largest department store chain--when the fire broke out.

An electrical short-circuit on the third floor is believed to have started the fire.