Chinese restaurant fire kills 22 as Xi Jinping laments ‘deeply sobering lesson’

A restaurant fire in northeastern China killed 22 people and left three injured in what president Xi Jinping described as “a deeply sobering lesson” for the country.

The blaze erupted at around 12.25pm local time in Liaoyang city of Liaoning province, about 580km northeast of the capital Beijing.

“As of 2pm, the incident has resulted in 22 deaths and three injuries,” state media outlet CCTV reported without stating the reason for the fire.

Mr Xi said the fire had caused “significant casualties”.

The leader called for “every effort to treat the injured, properly handle the aftermath for the deceased and provide support to their families, swiftly determine the cause of the fire, and pursue accountability in accordance with the law”.

Footage by Chinese media showed an inferno engulfing the ground and first floors of the restaurant in a densely populated area packed with buildings. More visuals showed paramedics wheeling a victim into an ambulance.

Hao Peng, Communist Party secretary of Liaoning, said that 22 fire trucks and 85 firefighters had been deployed to put out the fire.

Mr Hao said rescue work had been completed and people evacuated.

Premier Li Qiang called for a swift search and rescue operation and proper management of the aftermath. He also sought a prompt investigation into the cause of the fire and accountability for those responsible.

The Liaoyang incident was the latest in a string of fires in a country plagued by lax building codes and an often slipshod approach to workplace safety.

On 8 April, at least 20 people were killed and 19 injured in a fire that engulfed a nursing home in northern Hebei province. In January, a fire at a food market in Zhangjiakou city, also in Hebei, had killed eight people and injured 15.

In July last year, at least 16 people died in a fire at a shopping mall in southwestern China.

Explosions sparked by gas leaks were reported to be the cause in two major fire incidents in the country last year. One blast, in a Hebei restaurant, killed two people while the other, in a highrise building in Shenzhen province, left at least one person dead.