Hailed as a climate visionary, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was once welcomed to Buckingham Palace but was blindsided by this week’s coup.

Johannesburg, with a severe shortage of affordable housing, has hundreds of illegally occupied derelict buildings that officials and housing advocates say have become firetraps.

A visit and imagery of the five-story building show that it had a litany of major safety issues that made it vulnerable to a deadly fire.

The blaze struck an abandoned building that had become a crowded squatter camp. The authorities were investigating the cause.

The early-morning blaze tore through a five-story building that had become a sprawling informal settlement, officials said. The cause was not yet known.