At least 14 people were killed when a huge blaze tore through a popular restaurant in Mumbai early Friday, police said, in the latest disaster to raise concerns over fire safety in India. Many of the victims were young women who were attending a birthday party on the rooftop when the fire broke out. Doctors said they died of asphyxiation, apparently as they tried to flee the burning building.

Local media reported that a false ceiling had collapsed in the four-storey building in the Indian financial capital, trapping people inside as they tried to escape. "Fourteen people have succumbed to their injuries and remaining victims have been discharged from the KEM hospital. Most of the deaths were due to asphyxiation," Avinash Supe, dean of the local KEM hospital told AFP.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the fire, and had filed a preliminary case against the restaurant's owners. Five city officials have been suspended for negligence in connection with the fire, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, without giving further details. No one was immediately available to confirm the report.

The fire was extinguished in the early hours but an AFP reporter at the scene said the rooftop where the party was taking place had been gutted, with blackened ice buckets and ashtrays strewn around. Eleven of the victims were women, and survivors said people had become trapped in the restroom when the fire broke out.

"The ladies' washroom was far away from the exit so many women died due to asphyxiation," Torel Thakur told AFP at the Bhatia hospital in Mumbai, where her husband was being treated for burns.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017