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Eight people have died in a hostel fire in the Latvian capital Riga, the fire brigade said on Wednesday.

Six more people were taken to the hospital early in the morning with burns and smoke poisoning, according to the fire brigade.

According to Riga’s Mayor Martins Stakis, most of the victims were foreigners.

The fire broke out for initially unexplained reasons in the six-storey building, which is located in the city centre.

A witness said on Latvian television that she heard an explosion.

According to the mayor, the affected building is a state property.

Photos and videos posted on the internet showed open flames and thick smoke rising into the sky from the top floor.

Several fire brigade units were deployed to get the blaze under control, they said.

President Egils Levits expressed his condolences to the victims’ families on Latvian television.

A group of Latvian IT and telecommunication companies have joined forces to develop a mobile application for tracking contacts of people infected with the novel coronavirus, local media reported on Tuesday.

Developers of the app hope that initially it will be used by some 400,000 of Latvia’s 1.9 million residents, thus helping prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the population.

The app, which uses Bluetooth to detect the presence of an infected person and runs on iOS and Android devices, will be available for free downloading in mid-May, the developers said at a news conference.

The coronavirus contact tracking app has been developed by LMT mobile operator, IT services providers MAKIT, Mobilly, TestDevLab and Zippy Vission, as well as the University of Latvia and Andris Berzins, a co-founder of TechHub Riga NGO.

The project has been implemented with the support of Latvian President Egils Levits, the State Chancellery, the Latvian Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Riga-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, as well as medical experts and epidemiologists.

Berzins said that the mobile app has been developed in line with the European Union’s personal data protection requirements.

All personal data will be encrypted to make sure users remain anonymous.

Users would agree to get in touch with the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control if they discovered that they had come into contact with an infected person.

The use of the contact tracing app will not be made mandatory so it will be left to each person to decide whether to download and use it.