BEIJING, June 1 -- China Thursday indicted 14 of 19 officials already sacked for negligence in the fiery deaths of 325 people in a Dec. 8 cinema blaze in the northwest oil town of Karamay. Ten officials, including former Vice Mayor Zhao Lanxiu, were charged with neglecting safety and taking 'insufficient efforts in fire relief work,' the official Xinhua news agency said.
Another four face charges of seriously violating fire regulations and being absent from their posts during China's worst blaze in 15 years. The fire raged through the cinema, which was packed with 796 people including at least 500 school children participating in a ceremony marking a successful campaign to wipe out illiteracy in Karamay's largely Muslim Uighur community. All but one of the nine exits were locked, and the state-run Chinese media accused high level officials of escaping quickly and leaving the children and their teachers to perish in the inferno. A total of 288 children died, with the majority asphyxiated by noxious smoke and many trampled to death in the rush for the only open door. The fire came 11 days after 233 young dancers died in a disco inferno in northeastern Liaoning province and was the last of 260 major blazes reported across China in 1994, killing 2,821 people. It prompted an emergency fire safety campaign through China's rapidly expanding entertainment sector and new laws to enforce stricter penalties for safety violations. But a fire engulfed another cinema in Xinjiang April 25, killing 51 people and flames ravaged a dance hall in the southern province of Fujian May 3, leaving 13 dead. Both blazes were blamed on blocked exits and highly flammable materials.
