BEIJING (AP) _ A fire at a crowded shopping mall killed at least 53 people Sunday in China's northeast, while 39 died in a blaze in a temple in the southeast, state media said. The fires added to a string of deadly accidents despite repeated government vows to improve public safety.
Fires, coal mine accidents and other disasters blamed on shoddy construction, indifference to safety rules and other negligence occur frequently in China, killing scores of people at a time.
President Hu Jintao and other officials have vowed to make safety for ordinary Chinese a priority. But repeated crackdowns and threats to punish negligent officials appear to be having little effect. The government says the number of people killed in industrial accidents last year jumped by 9 percent from the previous year.
The shopping center fire broke out at about 11:20 a.m. on the second floor of the five-story Zhongbai Building in Jilin, a city about 590 miles northeast of Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said the blaze apparently began in a storeroom next to a boiler room.
About 70 people also were injured, Xinhua said.
``It was an especially large fire,'' said Fang Wanyou, a city government spokesman reached by telephone in Jilin. ``The cause is still being investigated.''
The building was crowded with weekend shoppers, Xinhua said. It said it took about 260 firefighters more than four hours to extinguish the blaze.
Many of the dead were sales clerks, and firefighters were among the injured, Fang said. He said it wasn't clear why the fire spread so fast.
The temple fire broke out at about 2:15 p.m. in Wufeng, a village in Zhejiang province, Xinhua said. It said firefighters put out the blaze about 30 minutes later. The cause was under investigation.
The village is about 60 miles southwest of Shanghai.
The report didn't say whether the temple was Buddhist or of China's indigenous Taoist faith.
China has suffered a string of accidents in recent weeks that have killed scores of people. Less than two weeks ago, 37 people were killed in a stampede in Beijing during a festival celebrating the last night of the Lunar New Year holiday. Also during the holiday, a bus crash in China's southeast killed 24 people.
In December, a gas well blowout in the country's west killed 243 people _ leaving entire villages strewn with bodies.
Hu, who took power last year in a generational leadership change, says he wants to create a ``well-off society'' that pays attention to quality of life as well as economic growth.
In Jilin, state television showed smoke billowing from the shopping mall, with flames visible through its broken windows and its rooftop sign completely charred.
The building's upper floors had a bathhouse, a billiard parlor and a disco, Xinhua said, although the fire began in the shopping area.
Fang said there also were restaurants in the building.
