BEIJING – At least 21 people were killed in a Beijing hospital fire on Tuesday and scores more evacuated, local officials said.

The fire had started at about 12.50pm in an inpatient department of Beijing Changfeng Hospital in Fengtai district, about 15km west of the city centre, the Fengtai district government said in a statement posted on its official WeChat account late on Tuesday night.

The fire was put out by about 1.30pm, with 71 patients evacuated. The number injured is unknown. As at 6pm, the death toll was 21.  Investigators are working to determine the cause of the blaze, said officials. 

The incident was heavily censored on the Chinese Internet, with news and eyewitness footage emerging some eight hours after the fact. 

An eyewitness video shows patients in hospital pyjamas perched precariously on air-conditioner compressors as smoke billowed from the building.

A patient is seen climbing down with what appears to be bedsheets used as a rope, rolling onto an awning over a lower floor and jumping from there onto the roof of an attached building. Screams can be heard in the background.

The Straits Times was able to verify through street view maps and distinguishing building features that the video showed the back of the Beijing Changfeng Hospital building.

The original video post was soon taken down, but the clip was reposted elsewhere, in the cat-and-mouse game with censors common during such incidents.

Videos allowed to remain online – played at double speed to avoid revealing too much detail – show patients, some with intravenous drips still attached to their arms, and medical staff being evacuated to an open-air plaza, as clouds of smoke swirled from the buildings behind.

 Other videos showed fire trucks parked next to the hospital as patients and staff milled around.

By 11pm, all social media posts with the hashtag “Beijing Changfeng Hospital Fire” had been deleted from Weibo. Videos circulating on WeChat earlier were also unavailable.

Comments sections on posts about the incident were quickly turned off, while posts criticising the censorship were deleted.

Such incidents involving multiple fatalities are rare in the Chinese capital, where fire safety is taken extremely seriously.

Last November, a massive fire in a Xinjiang apartment block killed 10 and injured nine, with many blaming a Covid-19 lockdown for the fatalities.

An outpouring of public anger over the incident led to rare mass protests across major cities, including Xinjiang, Shanghai and Beijing, many led by students on university campuses.