Eleven people have died in a fire at a foster care facility in Algiers, Algeria’s capital city.

The country’s civil protection department said 19 others were injured in the blaze, which firefighters were still attempting to extinguish at 06:50 local time (05:50 GMT) on Thursday.

Authorities did not specify the ages of those killed or injured.

Amid the fire, five people with special needs were “taken into care and transported to a safe location”, the civil protection department’s statement said.

Algeria has been experiencing a heatwave for several days, and nearly 1,000 fires have been recorded in the space of a week, the AFP news agency has reported.

Algerian state media said Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb had been to two hospitals in Algiers to visit individuals injured in Thursday’s fire.

The report was accompanied by a picture of Ghrieb next to a child in a hospital bed.