THE Army today attended a minor fire at Margate’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The blaze broke out on Elmstone Ward on the mental health unit when a patient set fire to a mattress.

Three Kent Fire Brigade engines also arrived at the scene, but hospital staff had already contained the fire. The ward and the one below it were evacuated.

Two members of hospital staff were treated in casualty for smoke inhalation.

A spokeswoman for Kent Fire Brigade said: “We did not mobilize the crews, so we don’t know who was manning the engines and whether they broke the picket to do so.”