Overnight fire at Austrian hospital kills 3 patients, cause unclear

BERLIN — Three patients died in a fire that broke out overnight at a hospital in a town just outside Vienna, Austrian authorities said Tuesday.

The blaze started in a fourth-floor room at the hospital in Moedling, and rescuers were unable to save three men who were in that room, Matthias Hofer, a spokesman for Lower Austria province's health agency, told the Austria Press Agency.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the fire, which authorities were alerted to shortly before 1 a.m. and that filled the internal medicine ward with smoke. Around 90 patients were evacuated, with some being moved to other parts of the hospital and others transferred to a clinic in nearby Baden.

The fire was extinguished by 3 a.m.