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Fire Kills at Least 31 People at South Korean Hospital Fire Kills at Least 31 People in South Korea Hospital
(35 minutes later)
SEOUL, South Korea — A fire in a hospital in the South Korean city of Miryang killed more than 30 people and injured more than 40 others, a local fire official and news media said on Friday, with the blaze suspected to have started in a first floor emergency room. SEOUL, South Korea — A fire at a hospital that doubled as a sanitarium for elderly patients killed at least 31 people on Friday in the southern city of Miryang, local news media and fire officials said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the number of deaths had reached 31, while a fire station official told Reuters the situation was developing quickly and the number of casualties could rise. Officials said they were still investigating the cause of the fire that engulfed Sejong Hospital with flames and thick smoke. They suspected that many of those who died were elderly patients who could not move without assistance.
Local television footage showed rescue workers and ambulances carrying patients from the hospital.
President Moon Jae-in convened an emergency staff meeting to address the fire, the Yonhap news agency reported.
The fire in Miryang, about 170 miles southeast of Seoul, was the second major deadly fire in South Korea in recent weeks. Twenty-nine people were killed and 40 injured in a fire that gutted a sports center in the town of Jecheon in December.
The deadly fires hit the country as South Koreans remain traumatized over the sinking of the ferry Sewol in 2014, which killed more than 300 people, most of them teenagers on a school trip.