BERLIN, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A fire that investigators said Tuesday was set in baby carriages overnight Monday killed eight people in a Berlin apartment building inhabited mostly by Arabs.

    Aside from the fatalities, which include four children, at least eight people were hospitalized for burns or severe smoke inhalation and another 43 residents were treated at the scene for exposure to smoke.

    The fire started in the stairwell of the six-storey building inthe Moabit district of the German capital and crept up a floor at the time before being put out within 15 minutes by firefighters.

    Fire officials might have been prevented if there had not been a language barrier.

    When the firefighters arrived at the scene, they advised the residents to remain in their apartments with the doors closed and waited for the fire to be put out, but most of the residents, who could not speak or understand German, ran out of their apartments in hopes of fleeing the building and encountered flames and smoke instead.

    Firefighters said that three apartments were completely filled with smoke after the occupants apparently panicked and opened their stairwell doors.

    "Some of the building residents ran to their demise," Berlin fire chief Albrecht Broemme said at the scene, adding that eight fatalities made the fire Berlin's second-deadliest since World WarII. Around 150 firefighters responded to the scene with 25 vehicles and seven ambulances.

    Three of the dead were found in one of the apartments while theother five in the stairwell.

    Arson was suspected after state investigators found early Tuesday several charred strollers in the ground floor corridor. They said it appeared the strollers had been set on blaze. Enditem