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Gas explosion hits Russia apartment
Blast destroys residential building in Kazan, 700km east of Moscow, killing eight.
Last Modified: 09 Jan 2008 21:48 GMT
The rescue work took place on Wednesday in
Kazan's icy subzero environment
 [EPA]

Eight people have been killed in western Russia after a gas explosion destroyed a residential building in Kazan, 700km east of Moscow.
 
Marat Rakhmatoulline, emergency situations ministry spokesman for the Tartarstan region, said on Wednesday: "The work of searching the debris is over. Two people were saved from the rubble and eight are dead."
Of the three people originally saved from the explosion, a woman later died in hospital.
 
Earlier the ministry only identified as seven people missing, but an eighth was found late in the afternoon.
 
The rescue work took place in icy temperatures of below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
'Huge bang'
 
Television pictures showed emergency rescue workers and machinery searching for survivors in the smouldering rubble of the apartment building as shocked locals looked on.
 
A witness from a nearby apartment told Russia's Channel One television: "A huge bang woke me up and glass began to shower down on me. I went onto the balcony and I heard screaming. Everything was on fire."
 
A woman who lived in the building told the Russian Vesti-24 television station: "We found our grandmother but we are still missing our grandfather and our seven-year-old girl."
 
The explosion happened shortly after midnight on Wednesday.
 
Such incidents have become commonplace in Russia's ageing apartment buildings.
Source:
Agencies
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