To ease alarm among residents, local officials detained eight people on Tuesday, a day after the fire swept through a 28-storey high-rise in China's commercial center.

The fire, which took more than four hours to put out, was blamed on unlicensed welding.

"Managers from companies of the building's construction, project supervision and property management were among the detained," state news agency Xinhua said.

China's rapid urban growth is throwing up vast numbers of new high-rise buildings, and while major fire disasters have been relatively rare compared with other developing countries,

safety maintenance can be lacking.

In a separate incident, Chinese police have detained 14 people in connection with a fire in a shopping mall that killed 19 people, Xinhua said on Thursday.

Reuters