BEIJING, June 16: A fire in a cyber cafe in Beijing’s university district on Sunday killed 24 mostly teenaged students, triggering an immediate ban on the city’s 2,400 Internet bars.

The blaze, which also injured 13, erupted between 1 am and 2 am at the Lanjisu Cyber Cafe on the second floor of a two-storey building in the capital’s Haidian district, witnesses said.

“I heard shouting, and thought someone was having a fight,” said a resident of the neighbourhood, which is used to noisy late-night revellers.

“When I got down into the street, I saw flames reaching all the way to the fourth floor of the building next door,” he said.

Firefighters arrived at the scene, and the blaze was put out at about 3:30 am, witnesses said.

One man, thought to be under 20-years old, escaped through a window at the back of the building, his hands and forearms blackened, according to witnesses.

“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me,” he screamed in a state of shock as rescue workers tried to take him to a waiting ambulance, they said.

“Most of the victims were probably students aged about 18 or 19,” said a local fire department official.

“I believe there were both boys and girls, although it was hard to tell because of the state the bodies were in,” he said.

One witness described how the bodies, covered with blankets, were laid out in a row in front of the building.

Beijing Mayor Liu Qi announced later that all Internet cafes in the city had been closed down, and only those found not in violation of fire and safety regulations would be allowed to reopen, Xinhua news agency reported.

That could mean a sharp reduction in the number of Internet cafes in the city, as Xinhua said only 200 of Beijing’s 2,400 web bars were legal.

Chinese authorities have long been targeting the Internet, which had 33.7 million users at the beginning of this year and has possibly led to the freest flow of information ever enjoyed by Chinese on the mainland.

Officials have regularly expressed worries about the harmful effects of online content, and only last month they announced new regulations severely limiting teenagers’ access to the Internet at web cafes.

The Lanjisu Cyber Cafe was located in an area housing several other Internet cafes and karaoke bars a few hundred meters from Beijing’s Science and Technology University.

The Haidian area, in the northern part of Beijing, has a heavy student population as it has the largest concentration of universities in the city.

By Sunday, rows of blackened windows on both sides of the building bore testimony to the night’s fire, which appeared to have gutted the entire cyber cafe. Dozens of onlookers crowded nearby streets, trying to get a peek past police cordons of the scene and loudly discussing the possible causes of the fire.

“Many people inside the bar used to smoke, so that could be the reason,” said Liu Haiyu, a 23-year-old employee at an Internet company.

Residents who have visited the cafe, approachable only via an extremely narrow staircase, said it would sometimes have more than 100 visitors during busy periods in the evening.—AFP