Shackled mental patients die in South Korean fire

At least 34 psychiatric patients, many shackled hand and foot to their beds, were killed and two were seriously injured when fire ripped through a South Korean mental hospital yesterday, Reuter reports from Seoul.

Police said the dead, including 10 women, were suffocated by fumes from the blaze, which gutted one of the private hospital's newly built wards in the central town of Nonsan. 'Most of the patients were unable to flee the blaze because they were shackled . . . And the building's only exit was locked,' a police officer said.