Tainan Fire Department via EPA

Police investigators inspect a burnt-out nursing home inside the Hsinyin Hospital in Tainan City, southern Taiwan, on October 23, 2012.

Tainan Fire Department via EPA

A patient being loaded into an ambulance car following an early-morning fire at the nursing home in Hsinyin Hospital in Tainan City, southern Taiwan, 23 October 2012.

Updated at 10.39 a.m. ET — Police in Taiwan said a nursing home resident confessed to an early morning fire that ripped through the facility Tuesday, killing 12 people and injuring 60, many of them too weak to get out of their beds to escape.

Police did not identify the suspect, but Taiwanese television stations reported that he set the 3 a.m. fire because he was unhappy about his own protracted illness.

Smoke inhalation was identified as the cause of the 12 deaths, with many of the patients in the unit thought to be immobile and under intensive care. Firefighters evacuated elderly patients using blankets and rescue cranes while nurses tried to resuscitate some patients on a grassy field outside the hospital.  

-- The Associated Press and The European Pressphoto Agency contributed to this report

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Warren Clarke / EPA

Elderly residents are placed into ambulances after a fire at Quakers Hill Nursing Home in Sydney, Australia, on November 18.

Warren Clarke / EPA

A resident is evacuated to a triage set up at the local church after a fire at Quakers Hill Nursing Home on November 18.

Daniel Munoz / Reuters

Police officers work in front of Quakers Hill Nursing Home on November 18.

The AP reports from SYDNEY:

Two fires raced through a Sydney nursing home Friday, killing four elderly people and critically injuring 14 as firefighters crawled through blinding smoke to rescue victims. Police were investigating whether it was arson.

The fires broke out in separate parts of the complex, and homicide detectives were looking into whether they were deliberately set, a police statement said. Fire Assistant Commissioner Jim Smith said sniffer dogs would search the ruins for traces of gasoline.

A total of 88 patients were evacuated from the single-story building in suburban Quakers Hill as firefighters searched rooms on their hands and knees for patients, many of them bedridden and suffering from dementia, Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins said.

"This is a firefighter's worst nightmare," Mullins said. "Turning up to a nursing home with elderly people who can't get themselves out of harm's way." Read the full story.