MOSCOW (Reuters) – A fire killed five people, including two children, in an apartment block in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, RIA news agency cited the local branch of Russia’s emergency service as saying on Wednesday.
Fire safety is an acute problem in Russia. The country reports deadly fire incidents on a regular basis, with blazes often affecting elderly people and children.
“In the fire on the second floor of a nine-storey building on the Belarus Street, five people were killed, including two children, according to the preliminary data,” an official told RIA.
The incident comes a day after a fire in an apartment block killed eight people in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Alistair Bell)