Eight people died in a fire in an "illegal" tourist hostel in the center of the Latvian capital Riga early on Wednesday. Consequently, the city's mayor vowed to shut such accommodation down.

Mayor Martins Stakis said the hostel, set up in an apartment near the city's main railway station, was mainly used by foreigners but it was not clear yet who the victims were.

Alongside the eight dead, nine people were found injured and 24 evacuated from the fire, on the sixth floor, after emergency services were called at 4.43 a.m., a Fire and Rescue Service statement said. News agency BNS said police had launched a criminal investigation.

The mayor said the hostel was called Japanese Style Centrum. Pictures of its premises on the booking.com website show beds tightly packed into small attic rooms. "Rooms looked like a shoebox," Sofia from Spain wrote in a review on the website after staying in the hostel in February.

“Rooms looked like a shoe box,” Sofia from Spain wrote in a review on the website after staying in the hostel in February.

Another review, by a Latvian called Viktorija who stayed there in March, said the room had no window and no ventilation, while others spoke of long-term residents living alongside visiting tourists. “People sleeping in the stairs,” an anonymous reviewer from Australia wrote in December. The hostel did not immediately respond to questions sent via the website inquiry form.

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