China. After the fire, protests erupted first on social media and then on the streets of Urumqi

The fire that claimed the

in China's Xinjiang region has unleashed a wave of anger at the regime's "zero covid" policy, at a time when growing frustration with the policy towards the Covid has triggered protests in other cities as well. 

The fire broke out Thursday night on the fifteenth floor of a residential building in

, the regional capital and was triggered - according to the local CCTV broadcaster - by an electrical socket in the room of one of the occupants.

About three hours later the firefighters managed to put out the flames and extract nine injured people.

The protest was born on social media despite the censorship

However, a video has been released on

showing a fire truck

because it cannot get close since the area is confined due to Covid restrictions.

In a press conference, the local authorities ensured that the truck had difficulty reaching the building because the road was occupied by parked vehicles and specified that the day before the entire block had been classified as a "low risk area " and that the inhabitants had been able to leave gradually starting from 20. 

But according to the Hong Kong-based newspaper,

the Xinjiang National Health Commission's risk zone databases do not show at all that the Jianxiang area - where the building was located - had been changed to a "low-rise area". risk".

Not only that: the authorities claimed that the fire spread because the fire door was open and that some of the residents were unable to escape because they did not know the emergency exits.

The incident caused a stir on the web.

According to the specialized portal

,

- the local social network equivalent of Twitter, which is censored in the country - were used more than

.

According to the same portal,

received more than

but was not in the trending list, which suggests that it had been canceled by the platform's censors. 

Some of the messages posted by users offer condolences for the dead, but also show outrage that these people have spent

.

One of the commentators compared the event to the deaths of 27 people in a bus crash last September in Guizhou province, people being transferred to a quarantine center at dawn: "History repeats itself again, and it's the common people who pay the price." 

Another video shows what appears to be a

that took place on the streets of Urumqi on Friday night: on one side hundreds of people gathered outside local government offices in Urumqi demanding an end to the lockdown, on the other a government official, megaphone in hand try to calm them down.

The city of Urumqi has lifted most of the restrictions

In the aftermath of the incident and after the wave of indignation, the Urumqi government announced this morning that the

and that it will "gradually restore normality in low-risk areas".

However, the authorities underline, there are still some areas considered "at high risk" of contagion that will remain confined since "the results of the (campaign for) the prevention and control (of covid infections) must be continuously consolidated". 

Despite the economic impact and the growing discontent of some sectors of the population, the authorities remain anchored to the 'zero covid' policy, which they say is the "cheapest and most scientific" solution and which has saved millions of lives, but the protest is mounting.