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Premier says no terror or political links to bank fire

UPDATE: Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says the fire attack at a Commonwealth Bank in Melbourne’s south-east was an isolated incident and not politically motivated.

Twenty-seven people were injured, including two critically, when a man carrying an accelerant walked into the Springvale bank around lunchtime on Friday and started a fire.

In his first comments on the incident, Mr Andrews told the ABC he had been briefed by Victoria Police and that it was important to make clear there was no political motivation or terrorism involved in the incident.

Daniel Andrews pudding video

Andrews says we must let the investigation process unfold. Photo: ABC

“As far as motivations, what drove this person to act the way that he did his status, vis-a-vis the mental health system, I’m very limited in what I can say there,” he said.

“We just have to wait and let the investigation process unfold and the most important thing we can do is send our best wishes to families.”

Mr Andrews said Victoria has always had a reputation as being a “big-hearted state” and welcoming to migrants, especially in the multicultural community of Springvale.

“It [Springvale] represents all that is good about being a big-hearted nation,” he said.

“I would urge everybody to look at this as an isolated act because that’s exactly what this is.

“My thoughts are with everyone involved in this terrible crime.

“We send love and best wishes to families, the victims of this terrible act.”

Victims of the fire that engulfed the bank have spoken of the terrifying moments when they felt trapped inside the building, wondering if they were going to die.

Phalla Neary Khmer was inside the bank with her three children when the man entered, doused himself in petrol and sparked a flame which caused the bank to erupt in flames.

“I really thought I was gonna die,” Ms Khmer told The Age. “I can imagine what happened on 9/11. It was the scariest moment in my life.”

The 36-year-old  Springvale South woman was in the bank to set up an account for her 16-year-old daughter Angel, who had just landed a new job.

Ms Khmer, Angel, another daughter Claudia, 18, and baby Fyta, 2, were trapped in the pitch black bank when the lights went off and an emergency door slammed down.

“I was thinking I can’t believe my son is going to have such a short life,” Ms Khmer told the Herald Sun.

Her friend Sophie Mach was near the entrance to the bank when the petrol-soaked man tried to light a match.

“He didn’t say anything but he looked at us like, ‘I’m going to die today and you’re all going to die with me’,” Ms Mach told the Herald Sun.

Springvale bank fire

Phalla Neary Khmer and her son Fyta were in the bank at the time the fire erupted.

Ms Khmer posted on Facebook: “All you could see was him, he was all burnt.

“All his clothes just dripped off and his skin, it just fell piece by piece on the carpet.”

Ms Khmer said Angel found a crack under a door with fresh air coming through, and placed Fyta’s face near it so that he could breathe.

Outside, 79-year-old Moui Wong had been in the line to use the ATM when the man rushed past her, carrying a container of accelerant. She heard an explosion and then a huge commotion, and wondered if the bank was being robbed or attacked by terrorists.

“Initially she thought it was a bank robbery but then when she saw the man lit up she thought it was a terrorist attack,” her daughter Bonita told the ABC.

As she turned to leave she was confronted by a man believed to have started the fire. “He ran and tried to hug, hold onto people and everyone just scattered,” Bonita Wong said.

A burnt-out ATM at the front of the bank.

A burnt-out ATM at the front of the bank.

As flames licked at the ATM the 79-year-old was bustled inside the building, only to be trapped by the closing emergency door.

Ms Wong said the bank staff did not have the code to unlock the back door, but “luckily this lady had some keys to some meeting rooms so she unlocked them”.

“They just ran into the room and closed the door but gradually the smoke just started consuming them.”

Within two minutes fire crews in breathing apparatus arrived to rescue the trapped customers, as well as staff, 15 of whom were taken to hospital.

“She keeps saying she’s lucky to be alive,” Ms Wong told the ABC.

Nur Islam

Police talk to the man suspected of lighting the fire on Friday.

Meanwhile details are beginning to emerge about the 21-year-old arsonist, known to his friends as Nur Islam, who was still under guard at the Alfred Hospital on Saturday, badly burnt and unable to talk to police.

The Burmese refugee came by boat via Indonesia and also spent time at Christmas Island and a detention camp in Weipa, north Queensland. He was from the south of Myanmar (formerly Burma) and identified as Rohingya – a Muslim minority group that lives near the Bangladesh border and which has been denied citizenship and freedom of movement by the Myanmar government, forcing thousands to flee by boat.

He had reportedly been sleeping in the living room of a crowded Springvale share house. His housemates said that over the past three months his mental health had deteriorated, and they had noticed him walking aimlessly around backyard late at night.

“Sometimes he not want to talk, his position just not normal, like mental problems,” housemate Joseph, also a refugee, told the Herald Sun.

Joseph said the 21-year-old recently complained of problems with his Centrelink payments.

“I think he have no plans to (burn the bank),” Joseph told the Herald Sun.

“He go for the bank and he get angry, I don’t know, because he’s not normal, thinking differently, thinking different way.

“Unbelievable, what happened.

“Why you do that? Disturb other people, you don’t do that. A kid as well.”

The same housemate told The Age: “He said, ‘why the government give money to me and the bank not give me.”

Pamela Curr, formerly with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, told the ABC the man had been waiting for a letter from the Immigration Department offering him a temporary protection visa (TPV), as a member of a cohort of refugees who were fast-tracked following legislation passed in 2014.

The ABC suggested those in the fast-track system were expected to receive a letter by the end of the year, or could otherwise be sent home.

Sister Bridget Arthur from the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project said that would be causing him great stress and anxiety.

“Now as it’s getting closer and they haven’t got a letter they’re thinking that they’ve been passed over or are gong to be sent back,” she said.

“Then they’re scared about the process itself.

“I know many who are just collapsing under the weight of it.”

Far-right groups have been quick to jump on social media over the past 24 hours and blame the incident on Australia’s refugee policy.

They have planned a rally at Victoria’s Parliament House on Sunday, initially to celebrate Donald Trump’s US election win but now to call for a ban on refugees, particularly Muslims.

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