Twelve people have been arrested in China over their alleged responsibility for a store fire that killed 39 people on Wednesday evening, state media reported on Thursday.
• Also read: A fire in central China kills at least 39 people
The fire, one of the deadliest in China in recent years, occurred in Xinyu, a city 740 km (450 miles) as the crow flies southwest of Shanghai.
The fire broke out in the basement of a store, according to local authorities, citing the official New China news agency as saying workers had “violated the rules” during the work.
Twelve people were arrested, Xinhua reported, without providing details about the suspects' profiles.
Thick smoke quickly spread to the upper floors of the building where the store was located. People inside, including students, were trapped, which authorities said explains the high death toll.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to avoid further tragedies.
This disaster came five days after a fire at a school in central China that killed 13 people on Saturday. No official statement has been made, but some media reports suggest that an electric heater caught fire.
Due to the sometimes lax enforcement of safety standards, fires and other fatal accidents occur frequently in China.
In April 2023, a fire at a hospital in Beijing killed 29 people and forced desperate patients to jump out of the window to escape.
In 2015, an explosion at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin (north), a port city near Beijing, killed at least 165 people.