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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, February 16, 2004

Death toll of shopping center fire rises to 53 in NE China

Three seriously injured people in the shopping center fire in northeast China's Jilin Province died in hospital Sunday night, bringing the latest death toll of the accident to 53, police said.


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Fire in NE China's Jilin Province
Three seriously injured people in the shopping center fire in northeast China's Jilin Province died in hospital Sunday night, bringing the latest death toll of the accident to 53, police said.

Another 68 people were still under emergency treatment in three separate hospitals in Jilin City, where a sudden raging fire blazed a four-story bustling shopping mall Sunday noon.

The fire, which was believed to be the most devastating accident in China so far this year, started at 11:20 a.m. on the second floor of the Zhongbai Shopping Mall where many people were doing weekend shopping.

Senior officials including Wang Yunkun, Party secretary of Jilin, and Hong Hu, the provincial governor, had urged every effort to rescue those injured.


Fire in shopping center in Jilin Province
About 260 firefighters and 60 fire engines were mobilized to fight the fire which was extinguished at about 3:30 p.m. Niu Haijun, vice governor of the province, led a team of officials to the site for rescue work and investigation of the cause.

By 4:30 p.m., 120 people were rescued.

A special investigation team headed by Sun Huashan, deputy director of the State Administration of Work Safety, has rushed to the scene from Beijing Sunday night.

Preliminary investigation showed the fire started from a temporary storehouse at the building's rear that nears a boiler room, and local police had summoned 36 people, including the center's security officers and the worker in the boiler room for questioning.

Built in the 1990s, the four-story shopping center at a downtown crossroads linking two major streets accommodates 111 shops and about 120 shopkeepers within an area of some 4,000 square meters.

The first and second floors of the building were for shopping, the third was a bathhouse, the fourth for billiard games and a disco.


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