Beijing: Fourteen people have been killed in a fire at a high-rise building in Taiyuan, the capital of the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, state media reported on Monday, as the toll rose overnight.
The Yingze district government said the fire broke out at 4:59 pm on Sunday in a mixed-use block in the downtown Liuxiang subdistrict. Flames were extinguished by about 7 pm and search and rescue operations ended at 8:30 pm, it said.
Thirty-eight people were taken to hospital. Five had died by late on Sunday, and the toll rose to 14 by Monday morning, according to the official Xinhua news agency. State media reported on Monday afternoon that 25 of the injured were still in hospital, nine of them in a serious condition. Those two sets of figures do not fully reconcile and are being checked.
"All-out efforts are being made to treat the injured, follow-up work is under way and the cause of the fire remains under investigation," the district government said.
The building, close to hospitals, schools, commercial centres and tourist sites, held flats, at least one hotel, restaurants and academic coaching centres for children, according to property listings and photographs published by local media. A hotel employee told the outlet Jimu News that he believed the fire began on the fifth floor and that people were hurt on the eighth, and that he helped firefighters search for survivors while parts of the building were still burning.
China began a nationwide drive against fire hazards in high-rise buildings in November last year, after a blaze across several tower blocks in Hong Kong killed 168 people. A month later, a fire at a residential complex in Guangdong province killed 12.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)