The death toll from a hospital blaze in the South Korean city of Miryang jumped to 41, Yonhap news said on Friday, in the country's worst fire disaster in more than a decade.
More than 70 were also injured in the fire, which erupted Friday morning on the first floor of a six-storey building housing a hospital and a nursing home, firefighters said.
Video footage and pictures showed a helicopter flying above the building in Miryang, engulfed by heavy grey smoke and surrounded by multiple fire trucks.
"Two nurses said they had seen fire suddenly erupting in the emergency room," fire chief Choi Man-Woo said, but the cause of the blaze was not immediately known.
Firefighters try to put out a fire at a hospital in Miryang, southeastern South Korea, 26 January 2018. Source: AAP
All the patients had been evacuated, he added.
"The victims came both from the hospital and the nursing home. Some died on their way to another hospital," Mr Choi said.
Pictures showed survivors being brought out wrapped in blankets, and firefighters picking their way through the blackened shell of the building after the blaze was extinguished.
Around 200 people were in the Sejong Hospital building when the fire broke out, police said.
The fire came only a month after 29 people were killed in an inferno at a fitness club in the South Korean city of Jecheon - a disaster blamed on insufficient emergency exits, flammable finishing materials and illegally parked cars blocking access to emergency vehicles.
A firefighter inspects a burnt hospital after a fire in Miryang, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 26, 2018 (AAP) Source: AAP
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