Fled shop fire suspects arrested in N China

SHIJIAZHUANG, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Two suspects in a furniture shop fire, who fled after the blaze killed nine people and injured one on July 14 in Quyang County, north China's Hebei Province, were arrested, announced the county public security bureau on Saturday.

One of the two suspects was the shop owner, a woman surnamed Chen, and the other was her younger brother. They fled after the blaze.

The bureau didn't specify details of the tracking-down operation.

A preliminary police investigation found that the two suspects hired seven people on July 13, and offered them 100 yuan (14.6 U.S. dollars) for each a day to produce illegal explosives in the backyard of the Sunshine Furniture City. The work began in the morning on the next day, which caused the fire at 9:56 a.m.

The dead, aged 19 to 40, included seven females and two males. They were all locals of Quyang County and staff of the shop, said deputy county head Li Yinfeng.