64 killed in Russian shopping mall inferno

Many children among the dead in Siberia

Sixty-four people, many of them children, perished in a fire that ravaged a busy shopping mall in an industrial city in Siberia, officials said Monday as rescuers searched through piles of charred rubble to recover bodies.

Russian television showed images of thick black smoke pouring out of the roof of the Winter Cherry shopping center in the city of Kemerovo, which also houses a sauna, a bowling alley and a multiplex cinema and was packed with people on Sunday afternoon.

Emergency services minister Vladimir Puchkov said on Russian TV: “We have recorded that unfortunately as a result of the accident 64 people died.”

He said this was the “final figure,” and included six people still buried under the rubble.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the roof collapsed in two theaters of the cinema in the blaze, which erupted at around 4 pm local time Sunday.

Witnesses told Russian television that some did not hear alarms or did not take them seriously and that the fire took hold very quickly, leaving many children separated from their parents.

“The alarm system didn’t work, people ran out screaming and in panic,” said a teenager, Milena, who had visited the mall with her parents.

Several witnesses said the doors of one of the shopping center’s cinemas, where children were watching cartoon films, were locked.

“Whole classes of children from nearby villages were there, they were locked in (the cinema),” a witness who gave his name as Konstantin told Business Radio FM.

Alexander Lillevyali, who lost 11-year-old twin daughters and a five-year-old daughter in the fire, told Meduza news site that his children called him to say they could not open the cinema’s door.

“My daughter kept calling me. I just shouted to her to try to get out of the cinema but I couldn’t do anything, there were already flames in front of me,” he said.

Locals told RBK newspaper that the cinema often locked its doors to stop people going in without tickets because it was understaffed.

The prosecutor general’s office said on Monday that all of the country’s shopping malls with entertainment areas will be checked for fire safety.