Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu has urged fire control departments to assemble professional forces to fight a forest fire raging in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

At least nine fire fighters died and seven others were injured while fighting the fire caused by a local villager's careless burning of corn roots Wednesday.

Winds re-ignited a fire that had been earlier put out Thursday, trapping the fire-fighters dispatched by county and township-level fire control departments in the afternoon.

Among the dead, four were county and township officials, three professional fire-fighters, and two volunteers, according to a spokesman with the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Prevention Authority.

Hui has urged the State Forest Fire Control Headquarters to dispatch professional firefighters to join the fire control work.

The mountain fire was 4 to 5 kilometers away from the nearest village as of 9 a.m. Friday in Jianchuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture.