Two people have been killed and at least 15 injured in a fire at a hospital in the western German city of Bochum and efforts to douse the flames are ongoing, the fire department and hospital officials said on Friday.

The blaze broke out in a patient's room on the sixth floor of Bergmannsheil university hospital around 2:35 am and spread rapidly to the seventh, eighth and ninth floors, Gottfried Wingler-Scholz of the local fire brigade said.

The two patients who died in the fire were staying in adjacent rooms on the sixth floor, said the hospital's director Thomas Schildhauer, adding that four of the injured had been taken to Aachen and Wiesbaden by helicopter for treatment.



Firefighters walk in front of the Bergmannsheil hospital in Bochum.

Witnesses said the top floor of the building was completely gutted by the fire and officials could not say whether it could be restored for use.

Some 165 firefighters are battling the flames. Wingler-Scholz said the operation would continue throughout the day, with additional firemen being drafted in from the region.

Bochum mayor Thomas Eiskirch said that 126 people had been evacuated from the hospital during the night, and that some patients unaffected by the incident had been released early to free up space for those who sustained injuries in the fire.

The rapid spread of the fire may be due to the fact that the floor above the patient's room where the fire originated was being used to store hospital beds, said Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia state, where the hospital is based.

The cause of the blaze remains unclear. The 650-bed facility is one of the largest in the region.