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12 held in China over porno theatre fire

BEIJING: Chinese police have detained 12 people after a blaze that killed 74 at a suspected pornographic movie theatre last week, state media said on Sunday.

Police in Henan province blamed an over-worked quartz heater for sparking the blaze at the Paradise video parlour in Jiaozuo city, Xinhua news agency said.

But video parlour boss Han Benyu and 10 staffers were being held accountable for poor safety standards that contributed to the deadly outcome of the fire, it said.

Public safety official Zhao Suxia was also among those held, it said.

The blaze occurred in the early hours of Wednesday morning at the theatre, killing 63 males and 11 females, including three children.

Han had illegally converted the theatre in 1998 from a state-owned food store, Xinhua said.

Local residents said the multi-room theatre often screened pornographic videos, and staff would lock the exits to keep police from entering, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

Bodies of the victims were so severely burned that only 16 of them have so far been identified by their relatives, Xinhua said.

The Ministry of Public Security called an emergency meeting on Sunday to address a spate of recent deadly fires. Some 13 major blazes have raged in China this year, killing 142 people -- twice as many as during the same period a year ago, Xinhua said.

Similar catastrophes have struck several public halls in China over the past decade.

In December 1994, 323 people, most of them children, were killed in a concert hall fire in the oil town of Karamay in the western region of Xinjiang.

A month earlier, 233 people were killed in a dance hall fire in the northeastern province of Liaoning, many of them crushed to death or asphyxiated inside emergency exits that were chained shut.

China's worst such fire was in 1977, when 694 people died -- 597 of them children -- in Xinjiang._Reuters