A fire at a high-rise building in Taiyuan the capital of China's northern Shanxi province has killed at least 14 people as the state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
The fire broke out around 5 pm on Sunday in a 40-storey building on a busy downtown road. State media said it appears to have started near the fourth floor of a lower annex. It then spread upward to the eighth and ninth floors, which house a hotel.
Video verified by Reuters showed smoke billowing over the tower while firefighters on cranes fought the flames from outside.
Authorities said 38 people were taken to hospital. Twenty-five were still being treated on Monday also nine of them with serious injuries. Xinhua said five of the injured died which raised the death toll to 14.
The fire was put out after about two hours. Rescue operations ended by 8:30 pm on Sunday.
The building is a mixed-use property. It has several hotels, short-term rental apartments, smaller venues and tutoring centres. Authorities are investigating the cause.
Deadly fires are relatively common in China where lax building codes and poor workplace safety are often blamed. Last November China launched a campaign against fire hazards in high-rise buildings after a blaze in Hong Kong killed 168 people.
A month later, a fire in a residential building in Guangdong province killed 12. In July, a shoe factory fire in eastern China killed at least 28.
