The fire broke out in a restaurant in a residential area in Liaoning Province's Liaoyang City, the report said.
Xinhua did not identify the cause of the fire.
Footage circulating on social media including X and Chinese platform Douyin, unverified by Reuters, showed bright orange flames engulfing a storefront on street level alongside scores of parked vehicles. Smoke was seen billowing out as paramedics tended to people on stretchers.
China's President Xi Jinping called the fire "a deeply sobering lesson" and urged local officials to quickly determine its cause, treat the injured, and hold those responsible to account, Xinhua said.
Hao Peng, secretary of Liaoning's provincial ruling party committee, said 22 fire trucks and 85 firefighters were deployed to the scene.Â
Hao said the on-site rescue work had been completed and people had been evacuated.
It was the latest in a spate of similar incidents across the country in recent years. In April, 20 people were killed in a fire that broke out in an apartment for the elderly at a nursing home in the northern province of Hebei.
Gas leaks caused at least two high-profile explosions in residential areas last year, with a blast at a restaurant in China's northern province of Hebei killing two people and injuring 26 others in March and an explosion in a high rise building in southern Shenzhen in September killing one person.
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