At least 9 die in Slovakian lodging house fire

BRATISLAVA, Aug 4 (Reuters) At least nine people have died in a fire at a lodging house in northern Slovakia, police said today.

Firefighters found seven bodies in the ruins in the small northern town of Kysucke Nove Mesto, near the Polish border, after yesterday's blaze, the official TASR news agency reported.

''There are still two more people missing,'' TASR quoted Frantisek Posluch, the head of the regional police department, as saying. The cause of the fire was not known.

Local television channel TA3 showed firefighters trying to lift parts of the collapsed one-storey house in which more than 80, mostly low-income, people were registered as tenants.

REUTERS PY KN1722