Fire in Russian home for mentally ill men leaves at least 23 dead

● Unexplained blaze began in wing for patients unable to walk

Some 23 people were killed when a fire swept through a Russian home for people with mental illnesses. Another 23 people were injured.

The remaining 24 patients were safely evacuated, including some who had to be carried out of the building, and the four medical personnel working at the home were unhurt.

Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the fire, which broke out late on Saturday at the Novokhopersky Neuropsychiatric Home in Alferovka, a village in the Voronezh region about 350 miles south of Moscow.

The fire in the one-storey brick building was extinguished shortly after 3am yesterday.

It started in a section of the home dedicated to patients who were unable to walk, emergency services official Igor Kobzev told Russian state television. He said 39 of the patients in the home could not walk.

All of the patients at the home were men. Those who died were aged between 46 and 78, according to a list released by the emergency services.

Those who were evacuated were placed in a nearby home for elderly and disabled people.

Russia has a poor fire safety record, with about 12,000 fire deaths reported in 2012. By comparison, the United States, which has a population roughly double that of Russia, recorded around 3,000 deaths by fire in 2011.

In April 2013, a small psychiatric hospital in a town outside Moscow burned down, killing 38 people. Only two patients and one nurse survived.

The health minister said half of the patients were given sedatives at night, but insisted they were not tied to their beds and were not given any medication that would leave them unconscious and unable to escape.

Much of the blame was placed on firefighters, who took an hour to arrive.

In September 2013, a fire at a home for psychiatric patients in the Novgorod region north-west of Moscow killed 37 people.

Investigators said that the fire was caused inadvertently by a patient who was smoking, but the chief doctor insisted the fire was deliberately set.