Police in northeastern China have detained seven people suspected of deliberately starting a weekend fire in a hotel that killed 10 people and injured 35, the government and state media said Tuesday.
The blaze broke out in the early hours of Sunday at a hotel operated by Chinese budget chain Home Inns in Tonghua, an industrial city near the North Korean border, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
It was extinguished half an hour later.
A Tonghua city government official who declined to be named told AFP seven suspects had been caught.
The victims died of smoke inhalation, Xinhua said earlier.
Neither Xinhua nor the city official indicated any motive for the arson, which police are still investigating.
Deadly fires are common in China and are typically blamed on lax observation and enforcement of fire-safety measures.
Last week, 18 poor migrants died and nearly two dozen were injured when a fire swept through an illegally constructed building in Beijing.
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