All seven of the fatalities, five men and two women who occupied the same apartment, were seniors with disabilities, it quoted a fire official as saying.

The fire broke out around 1.35 am at the Kuanxin Apartment Building for Aged People, a privately-owned 32-room facility in the city of Wenzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province.

'It's such a tragedy as they were too old to escape,' Mr Wu Jian, head of the city's fire brigade, was quoted as saying.

None of the home's other roughly 60 residents were harmed as the fire, which lasted only about 10 minutes, did not spread from the single flat where the deaths occurred, it said.

The report gave no information on how the victims died or how the fire may have started.

The home, which opened in 2004 in a rented building, passed a city fire safety examination in June, Xinhua quoted its owner Pan Xianglin as saying.

However, it added that Mr Pan had been detained by police pending an investigation.

Deadly fires are common in China due to the routine flouting or ignorance of fire and safety measures, often coupled with lax enforcement by authorities.

On Tuesday 11 young girls died of carbon monoxide poisoning in northern China as they tried to warm themselves around a charcoal heater in a school dormitory. -- AFP