BERLIN, March 29 — Hundreds of people were evacuated from a nightclub in south-west Germany after a fire broke out, police said today, with images from the scene showing the blaze raging on the building’s roof.

Police said the fire began around 3.45am (0145 GMT/9.45am Malaysian time) in the nightclub in Kehl, which is on the border with France.

The blaze went on to “spread over the whole building”, a police statement added.

Around 750 people were inside at the time and all left unassisted, with three people treated by emergency services.

Images published in German media showed a huge fire on the roof of the nightclub, which is located in an industrial area of the city.

The blaze is reminiscent of the fire which engulfed a bar in the early hours of New Year’s Day in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, killing 41 people and injuring 115.

Kehl lies directly across the Rhine River from the French city of Strasbourg, and the club regularly attracts visitors from across the border.

Unlike in the Crans-Montana fire, in Kehl the evacuation process seems to have gone smoothly.

“All of a sudden we heard: there’s a fire! There were several announcements in German, French and English,” a reveller told the local French newspaper DNA.

The paper quoted clubbers as saying the staff “handled it really well” and that the evacuation was “very quick”.

An investigation has been opened into the fire, the cause of which was not immediately clear. — AFP