Woman found dead as fire breaks out at Mannheim restaurant

Firefighters found a woman's body while extinguishing a fire at a restaurant in central Mannheim early on Thursday, German police said. The blaze broke out at around 02:45 in the city's Innenstadt G5 quarter, broadcaster SWR Aktuell reported.

The restaurant was closed when the fire broke out, police said, according to WELT and Der Spiegel. Firefighters brought the blaze under control quickly and discovered the body, believed to be a woman's, while dousing the flames.

Police evacuated residents of the building and the neighbouring one during the firefighting operation; they have since been able to return home, and the fire is out, police said. No one else was injured.

The cause of the fire and the woman's death are still unclear, a police spokesperson told SWR, adding that a crime could not be ruled out. Forensic investigators were at the scene, and Mannheim's criminal investigation department is examining both the cause of the fire and the cause of death. Police have not said whether the woman is linked to the restaurant, such as an employee or owner, or given any detail on how long she may have been inside before firefighters arrived.

Police said there was no indication of a link to the "Daltons," an international criminal organisation that prosecutors said in September was behind a string of fires in Mannheim in early summer, which were tied to extortion demands against Turkish and Turkish-origin business owners. Six suspects linked to that group have been arrested in Mannheim, Frankfurt, Duisburg, Borna and Leipzig, prosecutors said, with investigators describing them as the people who carried out the attacks on the group's orders.

A separate fire at a scrapyard in Mannheim's harbour area, where a pile of scrap metal caught alight, kept firefighters working into Thursday morning, broadcaster SWR Aktuell reported, though officials have not linked the two incidents.