Internet cafe blaze kills 24 in China

China's draconian attitude towards the freedom of the internet has been blamed for the tragic results of a cyber cafe fire on Sunday that killed 24 people and injured 13 others.

The inferno took hold in the Lanjisu Cyber Cafe located in Beijing's Haidian district in the early hours of Sunday morning. Those caught in the blaze were mainly students, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The cause of the fire is as yet unknown.

The customers, mainly from surrounding universities, were trapped as the cafe had only one exit and windows were barred.

The Chinese government's approach to the internet has been cited by many as a contributory factor in the disaster.

Government regulations, the banning of several western news sites and rumours of police teams scouting people's private internet habits have driven many internet cafes underground, with patrons hemmed in behind locked doors and barred windows."The government doesn't support web cafes," Wang Yuesheng, a legal internet cafe operator, told Reuters in the wake of the fire. "Getting the licence is very difficult, it requires four government departments' approval."

Immediately after the fire, Beijing's mayor ordered a clampdown on the city's estimated 2,400 internet cafes and suspended all new licences until safety reviews had been conducted.

Xinhua claimed that only 200 of the 2,400 cyber cafes in the city were legal.

In April, seven people died when a fire swept through an internet cafe on the Chinese tourist island of Hainan.