The bodies of nine people have been found and two others are feared dead after a fire at a holiday home for disabled people in eastern France.

The group included 10 adults with disabilities and one staff member.

Seventeen others were led to safety with one person taken to hospital after the fire broke out at 6.30am local time in the north-eastern town of Wintzenheim, local authorities said on Wednesday.

“We’re almost certain of the death of the missing people,”senior local official Christophe Marot said at the site of the fire.

“We’re cautious until we’ve located all the bodies,” he added.

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Wintzenheim deputy mayor Daniel Leroy said three of the bodies were spotted by a drone over the building.

The holiday home in Wintzenheim, which is close to the border with Germany, was rented by a charity that takes care of people with learning disabilities.

Local authorities in Haut-Rhin Prefecture said fire and rescue services deployed 76 firefighters, four fire engines and four ambulances and that it was “quickly brought under control despite the violent flames”.

It said that those missing were from a group of people from the city of Nancy, a two-hour drive away.

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts are with the victims, the injured and their families as he thanked emergency services.

The mayor of Nancy, Mathieu Klein, wrote he is “deeply saddened by the terrible fire” that was accommodating disabled people from Nancy, on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

France’s prime minister Elisabeth Borne said she was headed to the site.

Earlier, interior minister Gerald Darmanin said there were likely several casualties and that the flames ravaged most of the building – 300sq m of the 500sq m building – adding that rescue operations were still ongoing.

The Star