Ten people, including five children, have died after a fire ravaged an eight-storey apartment building in one of Lyon’s poorest suburbs, French authorities said.

Fourteen people were injured in the fire in the small suburban town of Vaulx-en-Velin, four of them seriously, according to the prefecture for the Rhone region.

Around 170 firefighters were mobilised after the fire broke out shortly after 3am. The blaze has been extinguished.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw several fire engines and a security perimeter set up around the area, and residents and traumatised neighbours assembling in a car park opposite the building.

Vaulx-en-Velin, a town of 43,000 inhabitants, is among the most impoverished areas in the Rhone region.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin called the deadly fire “a shock” said that he would travel in the coming hours to the town, which is 290 miles south east of Paris.

Mr Darmanin was already travelling to Lyon on Friday to present the security plan for Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and France.

He will be accompanied on his visit by Housing Minister Olivier Klein.

It is the deadliest fire in France since 2019 when an arson attack in an upmarket Paris district killed 10 people and injured 32 others.