MEXICO CITY, June 22 (Reuters) - Mexican police have arrested seven government employees for their involvement in a fire at a day-care center this month that killed 47 small children, the government said on Monday.

The employees, facing charges of criminal negligence, were responsible for a warehouse where the June 5 fire started and then spread to the nearby ABC day-care center, the state government said in a statement.

As smoke poured from the day-care center in the northern city of Hermosillo, bystanders and firemen, unable to pass through the doors, punched holes through its brick walls to reach more than 140 infants and toddlers.

The fire quickly killed more than a dozen children and others have since died in hospital, creating outrage at the government and the day-care center's owners.

After melted aluminum from a faulty air conditioner ignited paper on the floor of the warehouse, where the government stored license plates and documents, heat and fire spread into the rafters of the industrial building and across to the day-care center, the government says. (Reporting by Noel Randewich)

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