Three men (aged 27, 27 and 57) and a woman (55) - all of whom are Spanish - were arrested in Madrid yesterday after a blaze in a flat in Madrid's Pilar district that turned out to be a secret drug laboratory.

The fire started shortly after 9.30pm in the flat, which is on the ninth floor of a ten-storey residential block on the calle Ribadavia, from where three of the detained had to be rescued.

Nobody was seriously injured as a result of the fire although thirteen people, including seven police officers, were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.