At least 17 patients and a nurse have died in a pre-dawn blaze at a busy hospital in Costa Rica's capital, San Jose, BBC quoted firefighters as saying. Patients in neurosurgery and intensive care wards at the five-storey Calderon Guardia hospital were trapped by flames, fire chief Hector Chavez said. Scores of patients, some of whom had escaped on ropes made of bedsheets, were transferred to other hospitals. The Latin American state has declared three days of national mourning. Promising an inquiry into hospital fire safety, President Abel Pacheco said he was "shaken". "This is a painful scene and it is terrible," he told reporters.
