MILWAUKEE (AP) — A fifth person has died following an intense fire that engulfed a four-story apartment building in Milwaukee on Mother's Day.
Details about the victim were not immediately released Monday by the Milwaukee Fire Department. Further details about the blaze also were not released.
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This image taken from video provided by WISN shows firefighters working at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN show a resident being escorted by firefighters at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN show a resident being escorted by firefighters at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN shows firefighters working at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
The fire was reported about 8 a.m. Sunday at the 85-unit building. Officials said some residents were forced to jump to escape the flames and smoke.
Ladder trucks were used to rescue other residents from windows while some firefighters inside the burning building crawled on hands and knees to get people out, Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said Sunday. In all, about 30 people were rescued.
Four people died Sunday. The fifth fatality was among four others who were critically injured. Several other residents were treated for lesser injuries.
An estimated 200 people were displaced by the fire which left the building uninhabitable. The building was built in 1968 and did not have a sprinkler system, predating a law that would have required one, Lipski said.
Lipski said the fire began in a common area and spread to multiple floors. Authorities have not said how the fire might have started.
This image taken from video provided by WISN shows firefighters working at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN show a resident being escorted by firefighters at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN show a resident being escorted by firefighters at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
This image taken from video provided by WISN shows firefighters working at the site of an apartment building fire in Milwaukee, Wis., Sunday, May 11, 2025. (WISN via AP)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry said Saturday the country would release dozens of prisoners, as the United States ramped up pressure on leftist President Daniel Ortegaa week after it ousted former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua said Venezuela had taken an important step toward peace by releasing what it described as “political prisoners.” But it lamented that in Nicaragua, “more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly.”
On Saturday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that “dozens of people who were in the National Penitentiary System are returning to their homes and families.”
It wasn’t immediately clear who was freed and under what conditions. Nicaragua’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government has been carrying out an ongoing crackdown since mass social protests in 2018, that were violently repressed.
Nicaragua’s government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and more, then exiled them, stripping hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. Since 2018, it has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. Nicaragua’s government often accused critics and opponents of plotting against the government.
In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned political opponents, critics and activists. It stripped them of Nicaraguan citizenship and sent them to other countries like the U.S. and Guatemala. Observers have called it an effort to wash its hands of its opposition and offset international human rights criticism. Many of those Nicaraguans were forced into a situation of "statelessness."
Saturday on X, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs again slammed Nicaragua’s government. “Nicaraguans voted for a president in 2006, not for an illegitimate lifelong dynasty,” it said. “Rewriting the Constitution and crushing dissent will not erase the Nicaraguans’ aspirations to live free from tyranny.”
Danny Ramírez-Ayérdiz, executive-secretary of the Nicaraguan human rights organization CADILH, said he had mixed feelings about the releases announced Saturday.
“On the one hand, I’m glad. All political prisoners suffer some form of torture. But on the other hand, I know these people will continue to be harassed, surveilled and monitored by the police, and so will their families.”
Ramírez-Ayérdiz said the liberation of the prisoners is a response to pressure exerted by the United States. “There is surely a great deal of fear within the regime that the U.S. might completely dismantle it,” he said.
FILE - Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega waves after attending the swearing-in ceremony of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro for a third term at the National Assembly in Caracas, Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
