A restaurant fire in northeastern China killed 22 people on Tuesday, the official news agency Xinhua said, in the latest in a series of similar deadly incidents around the country.
Xinhua did not identify the cause of the fire but said President Xi Jinping called it "a deeply sobering lesson" and urged local officials to quickly treat the injured, determine what triggered the blaze and hold those responsible to account.
The fire broke out at 12:25pm (0425 GMT) in a restaurant in a residential area of Liaoning Province's Liaoyang City, state broadcaster CCTV said. Three people were injured.
Footage circulating on social media, including X and Chinese platform Douyin, unverified by Reuters, showed bright orange flames engulfing a storefront on street level alongside scores of parked vehicles. Smoke was seen billowing out as paramedics tended to people on stretchers.
Hao Peng, secretary of Liaoning's provincial ruling party committee, said 22 fire trucks and 85 firefighters were deployed to the scene. Hao said the on-site rescue work had been completed and people had been evacuated.
It was the latest in a spate of similar incidents across China in recent years.
In April, 20 people were killed in a fire that broke out in an apartment for the elderly at a nursing home in the northern province of Hebei.
Gas leaks caused at least two high-profile explosions in residential areas in 2024, with a blast at a restaurant in China’s northern province of Hebei killing two people and injuring 26 others in March and an explosion at a a high-rise building in southern Shenzhen in September killing one person.
