SHENZHEN - A FIRE and subsequent stampede at a club in southern China killed 43 people and left 88 injured, state media said Sunday, in the latest incident highlighting China's abysmal fire safety record.

The blaze late on Saturday at the Dance King nightclub in the city of Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong, was caused by a fireworks stunt that went wrong, witnesses and state media reports said.

There were hundreds of people crammed into the club when the fire started, triggering a stampede because there were not enough exits for everyone to escape quickly.

'The performer was shooting a gun, trying to shoot off some fireworks. He was aiming at the ceiling but a piece of cloth caught fire,' witness Liu Caihong, 31, told AFP outside the club.

'Everybody started running out.' Ms Liu, who had numerous cuts on her body, said she still had no news of her younger brother and 18 friends who attended the performance with her on the third floor of the club.

Thirteen people have been detained over the fire, the state Xinhua news agency said, but it gave no information on possible charges.

Fu Maoxia, 56, from Sichuan province, went to the club with his wife. They became separated and she died in the blaze.

'We were lucky enough to have escaped the Sichuan earthquake, but not lucky enough to escape this,' Mr Fu said, while roaming the halls of a nearby hospital searching for his wife's remains.

'The building is definitely substandard. The doors are too small and everybody was rushing out. People were stepping on each other.' Dozens of police officers had cordoned off the scene Sunday.

Neon lights on the club's facade had fallen down, while windows in adjacent buildings had been shattered.

There were 59 people in hospital with injuries, none of them serious, state television said.

Police, fire and government officials declined comment to AFP and officers at the scene prevented witnesses from talking to journalists.

Apparently fearing an outburst of public anger over the fire, Guangdong province Communist Party Secretary Wang Yang ordered that victims' families be 'appeased' and 'social stability' maintained, the China News Service said.

Mr Wang also ordered authorities to quickly find those responsible.

At a local government office, crowds of people gathered seeking news of missing family members.

Occasionally, grief-stricken relatives would burst out in screams after being told their loved ones were among the dead.

A Hong Kong university student who was to meet friends at the club but arrived just after the fire started, was at the office seeking news of their fate.

He described turbulent scenes during the tragedy.

'It was very chaotic with fire brigades and ambulances flying past me.

Everybody was rushing out of the building and there was smoke coming out,' said the man, who declined to give his name.

Deadly fires are common in China due to the routine flouting or ignorance of fire and safety measures.

The government said earlier this year that 159,000 fires broke out in China in 2007, killing 1,418 people, injuring 863 others, and causing direct economic losses totalling 990 million yuan (145 million dollars).

However, the toll could actually be higher as local officials in China are notorious for covering up deadly accidents to avoid punishment.

The total did not include forest or grass fires or blazes in the country's deadly mines.

In 2000, 311 people died in a disco fire in the central city of Luoyang. -- AFP