Investigators in China have accused a three-year-old girl of playing with a cigarette lighter and starting a workshop fire which killed 12 people, state media reported.
“Many others” were injured in the blaze at a clothing workshop in Junbu in the southern province of Guangdong last week, the official Xinhua news agency said late Wednesday.
The workshop owner’s toddler ignited a stack of sponges while playing with a lighter, the report said, citing local investigators.
The owner “turned himself in” after he was found to have been illegally using a residential building as a workshop, and had violated a range of fire safety laws including insufficient exits and a shortage of fire-extinguishing equipment, it said.
Xinhua said the families of those killed in the fire had been compensated, without specifying the amount.