Building fire kills 14 in China’s northern city of Taiyuan

BEIJING: A fire on Sunday at a high-rise building in Taiyuan, the capital of China’s northern province of Shanxi, killed at least 14 people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

State media said 25 people were still in hospital, nine with serious injuries, citing authorities after the fire broke out on Sunday evening in the building on ⁠a busy downtown ⁠main road.

Smoke billowed over the 40-story structure as firefighters poised on cranes outside fought flames that spread upward from a lower annex, video images circulated online and verified by Reuters showed.

The ⁠fire appears to have started around the fourth floor of the annex before spreading to the eighth and ninth floors, which house a hotel, the state broadcaster said.