ABCNews.com(KEMEROVO, Russia) — The number of people killed in a devastating fire that swept through a shopping mall in Siberia has grown to at least 64, Russian emergency services have said.
The fire engulfed the upper floors of the Winter Cherry Mall in the city of Kemerovo on Sunday. Among the dead are feared to be dozens of children. On Sunday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said that 40 children were missing and at least nine had been killed.
Russian police said another 44 people had been injured, with 10 hospitalized.
Firefighters were still searching the gutted fourth floor of the mall for bodies on Monday. The fourth floor contained a cinema and an amusements area where many of the children were when the fire broke out. The blaze was so intense that firefighters struggled to reach it. On Monday, part of the smouldering building briefly caught fire again before it was extinguished.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles especially serious crimes, said it had opened a criminal investigation around the fire due to possible safety violations. It said it had detained four people for questioning, including the director of the company that owns the mall.
The cause of the fire has yet to be established.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported that the fire is one of the most deadly in recent Russian history and the worst since a blaze in a club in 2009 in the Siberian city of Perm killed 153 people.
Regional authorities have declared three days of mourning. Russia’s main state channel, Channel 1, said it was cancelling entertainment programs in view of the catastrophe, the state news agency, TASS reported.
Russia’s emergencies ministry said the identification of bodies has begun. Psychologists have been dispatched to provide support to victims’ relatives. Over 650 emergency service workers were deployed at the site of the fire, the ministry said.
Much of the mall’s roof has collapsed and workers were checking the building’s structural integrity.
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