</s>HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Police and fire officials say a fire at a condominium complex in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has killed 13 and injured 27.</s>HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A fire at a condominium complex in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City early Friday morning killed at least 13 people and injured another 27, police said. State media said most people died of suffocation or jumping from high floors.

It’s unclear whether anyone was missing, said the city fire and police department, declining to give more details.

“We were sleeping when the fire alarm went off, we all rushed out to the staircases. It was very hot and dark,” online newspaper VnExpress quoted condominium resident Le Thi Cam as saying.

“We were awakened by loud noise. We ran out of the apartment but there was a lot of smoke. We only had enough time to grab the mobile phone, wet some towels to cover ourselves and ran out,” the newspaper quoted an unnamed male resident as saying.

The three buildings with more than 700 apartments were built six years ago in Vietnam’s southern commercial hub. The three buildings have 14 to 20 floors.

The official Vietnam News Agency said the blaze started in the basement parking area and took more than 200 firefighters more than an hour to put under control.

In 2002, a fire at a trade center in downtown Ho Chi Minh City killed 60 people in one of Vietnam’s worst fires.</s>HANOI, Vietnam – A city official says a fire at a condominium complex in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has killed at least 13 people and injured another 27.

The city fire and police department official says it’s unclear whether anyone is missing in the blaze early Friday morning and declined to give more details.

More than 700 apartments in the three buildings were built six years ago.

The official Vietnam News Agency reported that most people died of suffocation or jumping from high floors.

It said the blaze started in the basement parking area and took more than 200 firefighters more than an hour to put under control.

In 2002, a fire at a trade centre in the southern commercial hub’s downtown killed 60 people in one of Vietnam’s worst fires.</s>Authorities have publicly apologized to Alaa Mohammad Abdu Ali Aldoh, an Egyptian tourist who was robbed on Luong Huu Khanh Street in central Ho Chi Minh City last Friday.“We are very sorry for what happened. But I believe that local people are very friendly and hospitable to tourists, while the criminal element is a very small minority that is present in every society," a representative of the city’s Tourism Department said.Ho Chi Minh City was the first place Aldoh had visited in Vietnam. The robbery happened just two days after her arrival.Dinh La Thang, the Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City’s Party Committee asked the city authorities to apologize to the robbery victim, provide her with financial support and help her with the re-issuance of her papers.A travel company has also announced it will sponsor the remainder of Aldoh’s trip across Vietnam.</s>Australia’s Jetstar to fly non-stop to Ho Chi Minh City from May

A Jetstar Airways aircraft moves down the runway at Sydney Airport. Photo by Reuters

Australian budget carrier Jetstar Airways has announced the launch of direct flights to Ho Chi Minh City from May this year, naming it a rising holiday destination star in Southeast Asia.

The airline said on its website that it will be flying non-stop to Ho Chi Minh City from Melbourne from May 10, and from Sydney the next day.

A 12-hour sale which ends at 1:59 p.m. GMT on Thursday offers one-way tickets from just $159.

The airline said it also plans to provide connecting flights to Ho Chi Minh City from several other major Australian cities.

The city, which is the largest in Vietnam, is well connected to many other tourist spots across the country.

Jetstar Group CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said, as quoted by the Daily Mail, that Vietnam is one of the fastest growing holiday destinations in Southeast Asia.

“Vietnam has the potential to become as popular as Bali or Thailand for Australian travelers,” she said, naming its rich culture, vibrant cities, beaches and cuisine as the country’s major attractions.

Vietnam Airlines has also revealed plans to launch a direct service between Hanoi and Sydney in late March.

The national carrier is already flying daily from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney and Melbourne.

Australia is among Vietnam's biggest tourism markets, and more than 320,000 Australians touched down in 2016, up 5.6 percent from the previous year.

The Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Association recently suggested that the government should extend its single-entry visa waiver policy to Australian tourists. Vietnam currently allows visitors from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., Japan and South Korea to stay up to 15 days without a visa.

Australian tourists were named the biggest spenders in Vietnam by an official tourism report released in November 2015. Each Australian tourist spent $1,677 per trip, compared to the average expenditure of $1,114, according to the report produced by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

> Vietnam urged to consider visa-free travel for Australian, Indian tourists</s>Staff at the French IT company Linkbynet in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by AFP

Ho Chi Minh City will help some of its local businesses join the world’s top 500 companies, a city leader said.

The city will focus on the growth of the service sector and use innovation to grow business, mayor Nguyen Thanh Phong said at a meeting with the city’s business community Tuesday.

“[We aim to] develop Ho Chi Minh City into a technology hub and a smart city which will host local corporations listed in the world’s top 500,” Phong said.

The Vietnamese government has an ambitious goal of turning Ho Chi Minh City into the country’s major technology center – home to internationally competitive firms.

The city's policymakers approved last year a package of fresh initiatives aimed at paving the way for a tech startup boom.

Under the plan, the municipal government will support 2,000 idea-stage companies over the next four years through training, networking, legal advising, and funding.

The city has also planned to develop a system of startup incubators, also known as co-working spaces, where startups can gain access to basic operational infrastructure to start their business accelerator.

Ho Chi Minh City expected to double the number of private companies to 500,000 by 2020 and the private sector will become the main economic driving engine, accounting for about 65 percent of its gross domestic product, said Dinh La Thang, the city's top leader.

> Should the Vietnamese government invest in start-ups?</s>Traffic drives Ho Chi Minh City to invest nearly $400mln on second monorail line

Vietnam’s southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City plans to invest VND 8.4 trillion ($377 million) into building a second monorail connecting Go Vap District with District 12, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday.

The city’s authorities said building a monorail system would preempt traffic congestion spurred by rapid growth in automobile ownership.

Automobile ownership is growing at 20 percent annually, more than twice the rate of motorcycle ownership, said the Asian Development Bank.

Ho Chi Minh City is headed towards a population of 10 million people by 2020, according to the World Bank.

The monorail lines, or elevated single-rail tracks, can be built on road dividers and are especially cost-effective because they cost one-sixth of the price of an underground railway system and are cheaper to maintain, according to industry experts.

With the number of vehicles growing at an average annual rate of 10 percent in major cities and road space at only 2 percent, Vietnam’s urban areas, including Ho Chi Minh City, are on course for crippling gridlock if they don’t adopt light transit.

Ho Chi Minh City now has 7.43 million motorcycles, which have put mounting pressure on its weakly developed transport infrastructure.

The project is subject to the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s approval.

The construction work, starting in 2019, is expected to take five years, reported the Vietnam News Agency.

The city will choose investors through an international tender.

Under Ho Chi Minh City's revised master plan for transport to 2020 approved by the Vietnamese government, the city will have eight metro lines, six bus rapid transit routes and three monorail lines.

> Over six thousand traffic accidents recorded in first quarter</s>Ho Chi Minh City could build more houses for low-income earners, but a land shortage means it could only meet demand by 1 percent of those in need, a local newspaper has reported.

The city could follow its neighbor Binh Duong province to build 30-square-meters houses near industrial parks, university complexes and in areas where infrastructure, schools and hospitals are ready, the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper said, citing a proposal by the city's real estate association.

Binh Duong, an industrial hub north of Ho Chi Minh City, in 2015 completed a series of apartments at a cost starting from $4,400 for a 30-sqm house.

At similar conditions, Ho Chi Minh City only has space for around 10,000 apartments, which will serve around 1 percent of those who have demand, the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association said in the proposal to the municipal government.

“Most workers, laborers, low-income people and migrants will not be able to buy such houses,” the newspaper quoted the association as saying.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's commercial center, is home to nearly 13 million people, nearly a quarter of whom are migrants.

As many as 500,000 families have yet to own a house while 81,000 families need cheap houses over the next four years, the newspaper cited a survey by the city’s construction department and Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies as showing.

In the past four years, 16,900 low-cost apartments built by Binh Duong provincial authorities and some 200 companies have served around 17 percent of the province's migrants and factory workers, the newspaper said.</s>HANOI, March 23 (Reuters) - A fire in a Ho Chi Minh City apartment block killed 13 people in the early hours of Friday, state media and a fire department official in the Vietnamese economic hub said.

The blaze at Carina Plaza on Vo Van Kiet Street in the city also left 27 others injured, said the fire department official, who did not want to be identified.

"Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation, but we also found people who had died jumping from high windows," the official said.

"The injured are in stable condition now and we are still searching the block to make sure no one is still trapped in there."

The fire began at around 1:00 a.m. (1800 GMT Thursday) at the basement of the block and quickly spread to engulf the building, trapping hundreds of residents, according to the fire official.

More than 30 fire engines and 200 firefighters were at the site and the fire was extinguished after an hour, he said.

The official Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday that the six-year-old block was made up of 736 separate apartments. (Reporting by Khanh Vu Editing by James Pearson and Paul Tait)
A fire at a condominium complex in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, kills at least 13 people and injures another 27, with most people dying of suffocation or jumping from high floors.