MOSCOW – Fourteen people are confirmed dead from the New Year’s Eveexplosion at a high-rise in central Russia, local officials said Wednesday,as rescuers continued to pull bodies from the rubble.
The local governor’s office said 14 bodies had been found and that 27people were unaccounted for following the gas explosion in the city ofMagnitogorsk, nearly 1,700 kilometres east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.
Five people had been rescued from the rubble, including a baby, and 86residents were located unharmed, it said. “Work at the scene is continuing,” it said.
Battling freezing temperatures, rescuers have been combing through piles ofmangled concrete and metal and trying to stabilise what remains of thewalls in the Soviet-era apartment block, which had been home to about 1,100people.
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The blast destroyed 35 apartments and damaged 10 more, leaving dozens ofpeople homeless over the New Year — the biggest holiday of the year inRussia.- APP/AFP
