Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said on Monday that at least 53 people had been killed in a fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. Images on Russian television showed thick black smoke pouring out of the Winter Cherry shopping centre in the city of Kemerovo, which also boasts a sauna, a multiplex cinema and a bowling alley that was packed with people on a Sunday afternoon.
Investigators had initially reported five people dead including a child and another 30 people injured and taken to hospital. As the new death toll was announced, a source in the local rescue services said 69 people including 40 children were reported missing, the RIA Novosti agency reported, while the Investigative Committee said it was “verifying information that 35 people could be missing”. The preliminary findings of the inquiry said the fire started around 1100 GMT in one of the cinema halls and destroyed more than 1,000 square metres of the centre, news agencies reported.
