Ninety killed in China fires
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Firefighters battle flames at department store in Jilin.
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A fire in a shopping mall in Jilin, China, kills more than 50 people. CNN's Jamie Florcruz reports (February 15)
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BEIJING, China -- At least 90 people have been killed in two weekend fires in eastern China -- one in a department store and another in a temple, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Fifty-one people died and 70 were injured after fire broke out on the second-floor of a department store in the city of Jilin in northeast China.
It took firefighters four hours Sunday to put our the fire in the five-story Zhongbai Building, which houses a department store on the first two floors, the state media said.
Investigators are still looking for the cause of the fire, which began around 11:20 a.m. (0320 GMT).
State television showed smoke billowing from the building, with flames visible through its broken windows and its rooftop sign completely charred.
"It was an especially large fire," Fang Wanyou, a government spokesman in Jilin, told The Associated Press.
He said many of the dead were sales clerks and that firefighters were among the injured.
Jilin is located about 950 kilometers (590 miles) northeast of Beijing.
Meanwhile, at least 39 people died when a blaze broke out at about 2:15 p.m. (0715 GMT) at a temple in Wufeng village, part of Zhejiang province in eastern China, Xinhua reported.
Preliminary police reports cite negligence as the cause of the temple fire.
Despite repeated crackdowns by authorities, China has a weak public safety record and deadly fires occur frequently in much of the country.
-- CNN Beijing Producer Steven Jiang contributed to this report
