BAMAKO, Mali: The government of this West African country offered condolences Thursday to the families of those who died in a New York fire, which claimed the lives of at least nine people, all Malian or of Malian descent.

"We have heard this sad news concerning the fire and the drama in which these Malians died in New York ... We are saddened and dismayed by the news," said Mohamed Sacko, spokesman for the Ministry of Malians Living Abroad and African Integration.

Sacko said the Malian government planned to send a group to present its condolences in person to the victims' families.

The blaze engulfed a Bronx home late Wednesday, killing eight children and one adult and leaving several others seriously injured. The father of the family had been visiting Mali at the time.

Four families lived in the building, said Fatoumata Madassa, a relative of some of the residents who lives across the street from the home in New York.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Mali's capital, Bamako, said she was friends with the father of the family, Moussa Magassa, and that the house was well-known in expatriate Malian circles.

"I know the building and the family ... All Malians who go to New York pass through that building," the spokeswoman, Kalifa Gadiaga, said. "It's very hard for me."

Landlocked Mali is nearly twice the size of Texas, stretching from the Sahara desert in the north to a more lush south dotted with cotton farms. Though it has some gold reserves, it is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its citizens are counted among the thousands who have taken to trying to reach Europe this year in open-air fishing boats in a risky and illegal attempt to better their lives abroad.

Sacko said he did not have a figure on how many Malians live in the United States, but said there are a large number in the country.

The U.S. Embassy said it processes more than 7,000 nonimmigrant visa applications each year.

An official at Mali's embassy in Washington, D.C., said about 3,000 to 4,000 Malians were registered as living in the U.S., but that the actual number was probably higher.