International

28 children die in fire at school

MAKHACHKALA (Russia) April 10. Twenty-eight children died on Thursday as a fire roared through a boarding school for the hearing impaired in southern Russia, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Fire-fighters saved the other 138 people in the two-storey building from the early morning blaze in the city of Makhachkala, said Marina Ryklina, the Ministry spokeswoman.

Some 100 sustained burns and smoke poisoning, the Interfax news agency reported. Emergency officials said 16 were in serious condition.

Earlier, Echo of Moscow radio had reported that 39 of the injured were in serious condition.

All of those rescued were hospitalised. The children who died were mostly 6 and 7-year-old boys, emergency officials in Makhachkala said.

The rescue operation was slowed since each of the children had to be awakened individually because they could not hear alarms. Some of the children were found cowering under furniture, officials said.

Emergency crews said in the rush to get the children to safety, some were thrown out of windows and caught by rescuers standing outside.

High winds also interfered with the efforts to extinguish the fire.

Emergency officials said the fire, which broke out around 2 a.m. local time on Wednesday, may have been caused by a short circuit that occurred when electricity was restored to the building after a blackout.

Television footage showed smoke pouring out of the barred windows of the yellow brick building hours after the fire broke out.

The walls were charred, and all the windows had shattered.

An Emergency Situations Ministry plane left Moscow for Makhachkala with medications for the injured.

The fire came on the heels of a deadly school blaze in northern Siberia earlier this week.

A two-storey, old wooden school in a village in the republic of Yakutia was completely destroyed in the fire on Monday, which killed 22 students between the ages of 11 and 18 and injured at least 10.

— AP

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