At least 15 people, reportedly backpackers from Japan and South Korea "living in squalor" in minibuses, a shipping container and a caravan, had to be rescued from a raging Sydney fire.
An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian man in Gaza on Wednesday after rocket fire from the territory prompted Israel's premier to warn he holds Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas responsible.
A Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seeker has died after setting himself on fire while awaiting a visa decision in Australia, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said.
A fire swept through a South Korean hospice for elderly, infirm patients early Wednesday, killing 21 people in what police said appeared to be an act of arson by an 81-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer.
A blaze ripped through one of the world's top art schools in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Friday, damaging a historic building designed by the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
A 57 year-old man was charged Friday with starting one of the several fires tearing across southern California that has killed at least one person, local police said.
Thousands of people fled raging wildfires in roasting southern California on Wednesday as flames destroyed homes and triggered evacuations at a nuclear power plant, a military base and an amusement park.
Two young Chinese firefighters who fell to their deaths during a blaze in a highrise building are being hailed as heroes of their generation on social media.
More than 30 people were killed in a "criminal" blaze in Ukraine's southern city of Odessa, as violence spread across the country during the bloodiest day since Kiev's Western-backed government took power.
Ten soldiers and civilian staff at a Russian military munitions depot burnt to death while fleeing a fire that sparked a series of explosions, the defence ministry said.
Mortar shells slammed into central Damascus on Tuesday, hitting a technical institute in a barrage that killed 12 people and wounded 50, state media reported.
A passenger plane carrying 93 people landed safely at Perth Airport on Tuesday despite an engine fire that erupted shortly after take-off, officials said.
Eight people were killed on Sunday when a fire ravaged a drug rehab centre in Russia's Altai region, investigators said, raising fresh questions about security standards in the country's medical facilities.
An explosion and fire at a Gibraltar power station Sunday blacked out much of the British outpost and halted international online betting operations with giants including William Hill and Ladbrokes.
Survivors of last year's devastating Australian bushfires met with Britain's Prince William and his wife Kate on Thursday as the royal couple visited the Blue Mountains.