Beijing - Four young women died Friday after jumping from a sixth-floor dormitory to escape a fire at a college in Shanghai, state media said.

The students "apparently panicked amid flames and thick smoke" after the fire broke out in their shared room at the Shanghai Business School, the official Xinhua news agency quoted local police as saying.

The two local women and two women from neighbouring provinces all died immediately upon hitting the ground, the agency said.

Police were investigating the cause of the fire, which did not spread beyond the women's room and caused no other casualties, it said.

The fire had burned about 20 square metres of the dormitory room by the time it was extinguished, the agency said.

The Shanghai Business School in the city's centre has more than 10,000 students, it said. (dpa)