Articles | Five children die in Russian school

Five children die in Russian school

Published: Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 6:33PM

Five children have died and four have been injured after part of a school collapsed in Russia.

A section of the two-storey building in Belyayevka, a small town in the southeastern Urals, came crashing down, spreading debris over a wide area.

Local people rushed to help firemen and police trying to rescue the children, aged seven to 17, from the rubble.

An Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman said: "Eleven children have been taken out of the rubble, five of them are dead, four are injured and 800 people were evacuated."

Prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into possible violations of building safety regulations, while experts tried to identify the main point of weakness in the fabric of the building, constructed in 1962.

Cracks are visible in the remaining walls of the school, where windows were being replaced before the building's partial collapse, according to witnesses.

Many Russian schools and other public buildings are decaying after decades of neglect, though the Kremlin has pledged to renovate buildings in poor condition.

Two years ago, 45 women perished in a fire at a Moscow drug treatment centre. Days later, 62 elderly people and staff members died in a nursing home fire in southern Russia.