Ten people have died after a fire broke out in flats in Urumqi, the capital of western Xinjiang region.
The incident has sparked outrage online. The city has been under strict Covid restrictions since early August.
State media said the compound was classified as low risk for Covid and residents were able to go down.
But one resident told JEE News that people were only allowed to leave their homes for short periods each day and the time was controlled by the authorities.
According to official media, nine more people were injured in the fire.
The fire broke out on the 15th floor of the building at about 19:50 local time (11:50 GMT) on Thursday and spread to higher floors before being extinguished about three hours later.
Video from the scene posted online by Chinese state media showed workers removing fences near the compound and waiting for fire trucks.
Topics related to the fire had been viewed more than 800 million times by Friday afternoon, with internet users clamoring to know if residents had managed to get out of the building.
A user on the Weibo microblogging platform commented, “Please do a thorough investigation to see if the fire path is clear. The cost is absolutely too high. Every tragedy is worse than Omicron.”
A resident of a residential compound near the fire told JEE News that even in low-risk compounds in Urumqi, residents had to follow local authorities’ instructions on when they could leave their apartments for daily exercise. .
He said that he is following the stay at home order from August 7.
“We Xinjiang people dare not go down without permission because it would violate the law even if the gate of the building is not closed,” he said.
“After yesterday’s accident, we are now wondering if we should still follow the official’s notice in the WeChat group,” he added.
Fire incidents are frequent in China due to lax safety standards.
Earlier this week, 38 people were killed in a factory in the central city of Anyang. Officials alleged “electric welding in which workers violated safety measures”.
