30 feared dead after fire rips through Russian shopping mall

[VPutin]

30 feared dead after fire rips through Russian shopping mall

PUBLISHED : Friday, 13 March, 2015, 5:38am
UPDATED : Friday, 13 March, 2015, 5:38am

Agence France-Presse in Moscow

Rescue workers try to find survivors among the debris. Photo: AFP

Russian rescue workers yesterday combed through the incinerated rubble of a shopping mall for the bodies of 25 people still missing a day after a fire ripped through the centre, leaving five dead.

The emergency situations ministry said it had abandoned hope of finding any survivors after the three-storey building was destroyed in the blaze in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, 800km east of Moscow.

"The roof has collapsed, people have been trapped there but no survivors," Igor Panshin, director of the emergency situations ministry in the Volga region, told TASS news agency.

He said up to 25 more bodies, believed to be employees, were likely buried in the rubble and was also later quoted as saying "the hope of finding survivors under the shopping centre debris has been abandoned".

Some 500 police officers and riot police had been deployed to seal off the building on Wednesday afternoon as panicked shop owners pushed past a security cordon into the burning centre in a bid to save their merchandise. TASS quoted a police source as saying five people had died and 55 were injured.

A total of 650 shoppers were rescued from the fire that razed a surface of 4,000 square metres.

Tatarstan prosecutors called for the arrest of the head of a company that rented the premises for failing to properly evacuate people and handed the case to the Investigative Committee.