Moscow
A fire broke out in a retirement home in the Moscow region, killing at least nine people, local authorities said Monday.
The blaze in the privately-owned care home in the town of Krasnogorsk started at around midnight Sunday and was extinguished within an hour, emergencies services said.
“Nine people died on site and nine more were rushed to hospital in serious condition and are being treated in intensive care,” the Krasnogorsk municipal government said in a statement.
Russian news agencies said 37 people were in the building at the time of the fire. Investigators said the victims whose burnt bodies were recovered were aged between 66 and 90.
They said a faulty electrical wire was a possible cause of the incident and launched a probe into fire safety violations.
They later detained the care home’s manager, treating him as a suspect, news agencies reported. Kommersant newspaper said many of the care home residents were not mobile and the employees were unable to carry them out despite the fire being small.
The blaze is the second such incident around Moscow in just over a month: investigators are probing another fire in an upscale retirement home in Moscow in April, which caused the deaths of six people.
Meanwhile, at least 22 people were injured when a crude oil tanker burst into flames at one of Indonesia’s busiest ports Monday with rescuers scrambling to reach dozens trapped on board, an official said.
Two explosions were heard shortly before the blaze erupted on the 250-metre (820 foot) long Jag Leela, belching huge clouds of thick black smoke into the air.
Firefighters on board another boat battled to put out the inferno on the Indonesia flagged vessel that was docked for repairs at North Sumatra’s Belawan port. Emergency personnel rushed 22 injured sailors to hospital with dozens more still trapped on the tanker, said local police chief Dayan, who goes by one name.
The cause of the explosion and fire had yet to be determined, he said.
The blaze spread to at least one other vessel docked beside the oil tanker while the force of the explosion caused minor damage to nearby homes, Dayan added.
Russian investigators said on Monday they had detained the owner of a private hospice outside Moscow after a fire there killed nine elderly people and hospitalised nine others.
Investigators said they suspected that the blaze, which broke out during the night, was caused by faulty electrical wiring in the hospice for elderly people in Krasnogorsk, which is located in the wider Moscow region.
“The bodies of nine people aged between 66 and 90 years were found with thermal burns… nine more people were hospitalised”, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
A criminal investigation had been opened to establish whether safety rules were violated, it said.
The incident follows another fire on Saturday at a Moscow hospital treating patients infected with the novel coronavirus which left one person dead.
—APP
