Ten foreign tourists die in Chilean hotel fire

SANTIAGO, Feb 3 (Reuters) Ten tourists from Argentina, Germany and the Netherlands died in a hotel fire in the far south of Chile today, the head of the local fire service said.

The fire broke out at around 1130 hrs in the Blue House hotel in Punta Arenas, Chile's most southerly city.

''Twenty-one tourists were staying there, 11 of whom managed to get out, six with injuries,'' said Rene Mancilla, head of the city's fire service.

''Unfortunately, once the flames had been extinguished and during the process of picking through the debris, we found 10 burnt corpses of foreign tourists,'' he told national radio station Radio Cooperativa.

Four of the victims were Argentine, four German and two Dutch, he said.

The cause of the fire in the two-story hotel was not known.

Thousands of tourists are drawn each year to Patagonia, the extreme south of Chile, famous for its spectacular landscape of mountains, glaciers and fjords. January and February, the height of summer in the southern hemisphere, are the busiest months.

REUTERS PDM PM2222