SEOUL, South Korea — A fire at a hospital that doubled as a sanitarium for elderly patients killed at least 31 people on Friday in the southern city of Miryang, local news media and fire officials said.
Officials said they were still investigating the cause of the fire that engulfed Sejong Hospital with flames and thick smoke. They suspected that many of those who died were elderly patients who could not move without assistance.
Local television footage showed rescue workers and ambulances carrying patients from the hospital.
President Moon Jae-in convened an emergency staff meeting to address the fire, the Yonhap news agency reported.
The fire in Miryang, about 170 miles southeast of Seoul, was the second major deadly fire in South Korea in recent weeks. Twenty-nine people were killed and 40 injured in a fire that gutted a sports center in the town of Jecheon in December.
The deadly fires hit the country as South Koreans remain traumatized over the sinking of the ferry Sewol in 2014, which killed more than 300 people, most of them teenagers on a school trip.