THIRTY-SEVEN people were killed yesterday in a fire at a South Korean hospital, which also left 143 injured.

A doctor, a nurse and a nursing assistant were among those killed in the blaze at the Sejong Hospital in Miryang, a city with 110,000 residents in the south of the country.

No sprinklers were fitted at the hospital, whose director said that South Korean law does not require them.

Most of the victims were on the ground and first floors of the six-storey main building. Firefighters believe the blaze started in the accident and emergency department.

Many patients had to walk through fire and smoke to escape, as the main entrance was burning.

Police officer Kim Han Su said 34 of the dead were women and 26 were in their eighties or older. Most appeared to have suffocated, with a National Fire Agency official, speaking anonymously to reporters, saying that only one of the dead had suffered burns.

Dark smoke and flames were pouring from the emergency department when firefighters arrived, so they used ladders to enter first-floor windows.

Some carried patients on their backs to other rescuers below, who moved them on stretchers to ambulances.

Several fabric escape chutes were seen hanging from the building’s fifth-floor windows after being used to evacuate patients and hospital workers.

Dozens of fire engines and two helicopters were sent to the hospital as thick smoke blanketed nearby streets. The blaze was extinguished in about three hours.

Mr Kim said he believed police would be able to determine the cause of the fire today.

The deadly blaze follows a December fire at a building in central Seoul that claimed 29 lives, making it the worst fire for a decade at that point.

Before that, 21 people were killed in a fire at a hospital for the elderly in 2014.