Five children were among 10 people killed overnight when a fire broke out in a seven-storey apartment building in a suburb of the eastern French city of Lyon, the local government said Friday.

The cause of the fire was still unclear, authorities said, adding that the blaze erupted a little after 3:00 am (0200 GMT) in Vaulx-en-Velin. Fourteen others were injured, one of whom was in serious condition.

Two firefighters suffered light injuries while battling the blaze, which broke out on the ground floor of the building and spread upwards, they said.

Nearly 170 firefighters had been deployed at the building in the northern suburb.

Fire breaks out at historic Panama Canal lock

A small fire broke out Thursday in machines that operate the historic Miraflores Lock on the Panama Canal, which delayed the crossing of some ships but did not shut down interoceanic navigation.

The fire started in a tunnel where the machinery of the lock is housed, but the other locks continued working normally, said the Panama Canal Authority.

"A fire outbreak was recorded in one of the machinery tunnels in the upper chamber of the Miraflores locks," the Authority said in a statement.

"No injuries were reported. However, the transit of ships through this lock has been temporarily suspended as a security measure," it added.

The locks are huge concrete chambers that are filled with, then emptied of, millions of liters of water to raise or lower ships as they pass through the Canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Five percent of all global trade moves through the strategic waterway.

The Miraflores lock, more than a century old, is close to the Pacific and is visited daily by tourists from all over the world.