SEOUL, South Korea -- Twenty-one people suffocated and seven people were injured today in a fire at a hospital in southern South Korea that specializes in patients suffering from dementia and palsy, officials said.

One patient at the Hyosarang Hospital in Jangseong county, an 81-year-old man suffering from dementia, was detained in an investigation after security video footage showed him entering an area where the blaze began, police said. Police refused to provide further details, as the fire was still being investigated.

Jangseong Fire Department officials said 20 patients and one nurse were killed and seven people were injured, adding that the victims suffocated. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of office rules.

There were 34 patients and a nurse on duty on the second floor of an annex of Hyosarang Hospital when the fire broke out, officials said. More than 270 fire officers put the fire out after about six minutes, the officials said.

Officials said 45 people, including a nurse, were on the hospital's first floor but they all escaped.

South Korean media, including Yonhap news agency earlier, had reported some of the dead had their hands bound to their beds without citing any source for the information. Fire officials later said that report was inaccurate.

Officials are still searching for more than a dozen bodies from a ferry sinking last month that left more than 300 people dead or missing, most of them high school students. South Korea has also had two subway accidents in recent weeks. And a fire earlier this week at a bus terminal near Seoul killed eight people and injured 57.

A Section on 05/28/2014