Shopping mall fire kills dozens in Siberia

AT least 64 people, including nine children, have been confirmed dead in fire at a shopping mall in the city of Keremovo in Siberia, according to Russian emergency services cited by local media.

The death toll was expected to rise as the rescue operation continued on Monday at the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall, hours after the fire engulfed the four-storey building, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. “Two out of three cinema halls caved in from the fourth to the third floor of the building,” Vladlen Aksyonov, Russian deputy emergencies minister, told Tass.

A representative of the emergency operation headquarters told Tass that 10 out of 44 injured people were being treated in a hospital. Others received medical attention at the scene. At least 16 people were still missing. “They could be located in the cinema halls that caved in,” emergency service personnel told Tass.

The fire was brought under control, and a criminal investigation into the cause of the incident is under way, Tass reported.

The Ekho Mosvky radio station on Monday quoted witnesses who said the fire alarm did not go off and that the mall’s staff did not organise the evacuation.

Anna Zarechneva who was on the top floor where the fire started, watching a movie with her husband and son, said they only found out about the fire when a man ran into the theatre shouting. “We didn’t hear the fire alarm, they even didn’t turn on the light during the show,” she said. “That movie could have been the last for us, I’ve only just realised that.”

Alexander Lillevyali lost three daughters, 11-yearold twins and a five-year-old, who were in a cinema hall on the top floor watching a cartoon.

Lillevyali told the Meduza news website that one of his daughters called him, saying that they could smell the smoke but could not get out because the door was locked. “I was shouting into the phone, telling her to get out but there was nothing I could do — the fire was in front of me,” he said.

The Prosecutor General’s Office on Monday ordered all shopping malls in Russia to be checked for fire safety features.

Kommersant, a Russian publication, reported that, according to the preliminary probe, a child could have started the fire, as an area on the top floor near a playroom and a cinema was identified as the epicentre of the blaze. The fire quickly spread to the building’s plastic cladding and several hours later the roof collapsed, Kommersant reported.

Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said the incident was seen as a national disaster.

“The Kremlin has been kept up to speed with how things have been developing,” he said. “Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov says that President [Vladimir] Putin has dispatched Vladimir Puchkov, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, to the site of the tragedy. — Al Jazeera