A fire at a Planned Parenthood facility in Washington state Friday has been determined to have been arson, fire officials in Pullman said.
The fire discovered at around 3:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m. ET) caused “extensive fire, smoke and heat damage to the front portion of the building,” the Pullman Fire Department said in a statement. The facility has been open since September 2012, the fire department said.
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The fire was so extensive that the building was ruled unsafe by a building inspector, the department said.
Planned Parenthood has come under fierce criticism in recent weeks after a spate of videos released by an anti-Planned Parenthood group purporting to show a representative of the organization discussing the process of donating tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research.
Planned Parenthood said the videos, released by the group the the Center for Medical Progress, have been heavily edited. Last week, Planned Parenthood called on the group to release complete unedited video to the California attorney general. Pullman fire investigator Rich Dragoo requested help from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to assist and the bureau sent three agents from Spokane Friday, the fire department said. Pullman is a city of about 31,000 in the southeastern part of the state, about 75 miles south of Spokane.
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