A 77-year-old woman has burnt to death after her hair, which she had lathered in hairspray, caught fire when she lit up a cigarette in an old people’s home.

The incident took place at a retirement home in the urbanisation of Santa Fe in the municipality of Cuarte de Huerva in the province of Zaragoza in the Spanish region of Aragon on Wednesday, 16th February.

According to the regional newspaper Heraldo de Aragon, the elderly woman had used copious amounts of hairspray on her hair, and the Government Delegation in Aragon added that she was using an oxygen machine at the time.

Because of these two factors, the flames reportedly spread quickly, and the elderly woman was unable to put them out.

Reports state that the flames quickly burnt 60 percent of her body, and she was transferred to the Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet (Miguel Servet University Hospital) in the provincial capital Zaragoza, where she succumbed to her injuries.

Sources from the retirement home, which belongs to the company Grupo Vitalia (Vitalia Group), have since denied that the elderly woman was using an oxygen machine at the time.

The Civil Guard, Spain’s national gendarmerie force, which is responsible for investigating crimes in rural areas, is looking into the incident and whether or not the victim was using an oxygen machine at the time.

At the time of reporting, the victim had not been named and no images of her had been made public. Similarly, no information about her next of kin had been divulged.