A fire at a restaurant in northeastern China killed 22 people and injured three on Tuesday, state media in Beijing reported. Footage posted online showed the entire building engulfed in flames.
The fire broke out during lunchtime in the city of Liaoyang, about 580 kilometres northeast of the capital Beijing, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said the fire had caused “serious casualties” and its lessons were “deeply important”, the CCTV report said.
The report added that Xi Jinping ordered “all efforts to treat the injured, properly bury the dead and stand by their families, quickly determine the cause of the fire and hold them accountable in accordance with the law.”
Footage circulating online and verified by AFP showed the two-story restaurant burning with thick black smoke rising into the sky. Other documentary videos posted on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) showed an injured person being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance and firefighters using water hoses to try to control the fire. Another video posted on social media showed more than a dozen fire trucks lined up outside the restaurant.
China is prone to deadly fires, often due to lax building codes and neglect of workplace safety. The country has seen several such accidents in recent months. This month, 20 people died in a fire at a nursing home in northern China’s Hebei province. In January, a fire at a vegetable market in Zhangjiakou, northwest of Beijing, killed eight people and injured 15. The previous month, a fire at a construction site in Rongcheng, eastern China, killed nine people.