BEIJING, April 25 (UPI) -- A building fire in the Daxing district of Beijing Monday killed at least 17 people and injured 24, fire officials said.
"We saw people jumping from the building," Wang Xuegang, an area resident, told Xinhua. "It was a real nightmare. Some dived from the top floor and never rose again."
Officials said most of the dead were migrant workers hired by an unlicensed garment workshop, Xinhua reported.
Several of the victims lived in the building.
Thirty people were evacuated, officials said.
The fire broke out in the workshop, they said.
Witnesses said trapped workers were seen screaming and trying to break through the shop's barred windows to try to escape. Officials said the bars were on the windows to prevent break-ins.
Xinhua reported the building was illegally built in 2010. The owner apparently leased the ground floor to the owners of the garment business and rented space on the remaining three floors to migrants seeking inexpensive housing, the news agency said.
The blaze was the deadliest in Beijing in nine years. On June 16, 2002, 25 people died in an underground Internet cafe fire.
