Update | 64 dead as fire rips through Russian shopping centre, no alarms reported
Investigators have launched a probe into possible negligence and violations of the fire safety rules
With the fire alarms silent and staff reportedly nowhere to be seen, a fire at a shopping centre packed with children and their parents on the first weekend of the school recess killed 64 people in eastern Russia.
The fire at the Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo, a city in Siberia, about 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) east of Moscow, was extinguished by Monday morning after burning through the night. Firefighters were still recovering bodies as parts of the buildings were still smouldering. Some of the dead were found inside a cinema.
Sixty-four deaths were confirmed after the firefighters finished combing through the four floors of the mall, Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said.
Six of the bodies have not yet been recovered. Puchkov would not immediately say how many of the victims were children.
Ten people have been hospitalised. Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova, who visited the Keremovo hospital where the victims were receiving treatment, said that the patient in the gravest condition was an 11-year-old boy who jumped out of a window from the fourth floor. The boy’s parents and younger brother died in the fire, Skvortsova said.