DAVAO, Philippines/December 23, 2017 (AP)(STL.NEWS) —  Philippine officials say a fire gutted a shopping mall in a southern city and some two dozen employees may have been trapped inside.

It is unclear when firefighters can break into the four-story NCCC Mall in Davao city, which burned up late Saturday. Details of the casualties are sketchy.

President Rodrigo Duterte and Roman Catholic Church officials visited the site late Saturday to meet with relatives of the trapped office employees and asked them to pray.

The mall’s marketing manager, Janna Abdullah Mutalib, says the fire started Saturday morning at the third floor where clothes, appliances and furniture are sold, after a storm hit Davao and flooded parts of the city.

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 by Associated Press, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (ZS)

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