A fire tore through a coal company building on Thursday, November 16, at around 6:50 am local time, in a northern Chinese city, killing 25 people and injuring dozens more.

The four-floor building belongs to Yongju Coal Company and is in Luliang City in the northern Shanxi province, a major coal-producing region, according to state broadcaster CCTV. District officials issued a statement saying rescue and emergency services were at the scene.

Twenty-six people were confirmed dead, state news agency Xinhua reported. Earlier, CCTV said that "a total of 63 people have been evacuated so far, 51 of whom were sent to the Luliang First People's Hospital for treatment," though it was unclear if the 26 dead were among those figures. "Rescue work is still in progress and the cause of the fire is under investigation," it added. By Thursday afternoon, the fire had "now been brought under control" and rescue work was ongoing, the local fire department told CCTV. The blaze appeared to have started in a building with offices and dormitories and not where coal was being mined.

Industrial accidents are common in China due to lax safety standards and poor enforcement, though the government has been working on improving safety. In July, eleven people died after the roof of a school gym collapsed in the country's northeast. The month before, an explosion at a barbecue restaurant in northwestern China left 31 dead and prompted official pledges of a nationwide campaign to promote workplace safety.

In April, a hospital fire in Beijing killed 29 people and forced desperate survivors to jump out of windows to escape. One of the worst such accidents took place in 2015 in Tianjin, where a gigantic explosion at a chemical warehouse killed at least 165 people.