Manila:
Foreigners are believed to be among six people who died on Friday when a fire razed a small hotel near a former US naval base in the Philippines, rescue officials said.
Based on the hotel's guest list, three American men, a South Korean man, and two women of unspecified nationalities had checked into the rooms where six bodies were later found, Olongapo city civil defence chief Angelito Layug said.
However, investigators have yet to identify the victims of the pre-dawn blaze that hit the Dryden hotel in the northern port's entertainment district, he told AFP.
"This area has a fairly large population of retired American servicemen," he said.
They settled in and around Olongapo after the US military pulled out of the nearby Subic Naval Base in 1991, Layug added.
Carlo Elepong, an aide to Layug, described one of the victims as a man in his 80s, but the authorities declined to release the guest list.
City fire investigator Jose Borlagdatan described said the hotel was a small building with barred windows that was situated in a narrow street.