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Police on the hunt as blast toll reaches 48
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Police on the hunt as blast toll reaches 48
POLICE combed scrap-metal markets yesterday searching for two men who stripped parts from a gas pipe outside an apartment block in northern Russia, triggering an explosion that killed 48 people. The blast in the White Sea port of Arkhangelsk destroyed a large section of the building early on Tuesday, trapping the sleeping residents under tonnes of shattered concrete and steel. Russian police have been searching for two men seen removing pipes and tools from an apartment block just before the explosion, and Itar-Tass news agency quoted prosecutors as saying a valve was missing from a gas pipe at the site.
?This is important evidence, which confirms our main explanation ? that external interference caused the gas leak that caused the blast,? the agency quoted a local prosecutors? spokesman as saying. It added that police were searching among scrap-metal merchants for anyone trying to sell valve components.
Sofas and tables hung into the void from the edges of neighbouring blocks severely damaged in the blast which claimed the lives 48 people, including eight children, according to Emergencies Ministry officials. ?It is most unlikely we will find anybody alive here. But to be sure we will continue rescue works to the end,? Deputy Emergencies Minister Yuri Vorobyov told state television, as rescuers sifted through mounds of rubble.
It was not clear how many people had been in the building at the time of the blast, although rescuers aided by sniffer dogs found 24 people alive on Tuesday. The city?s entire fleet of cranes was drafted in to shift huge piles of rubble. Accidents with domestic services are common in Russia. A gas explosion last month in a Siberian cafe killed 18 and on Sunday the historic Manege building, next to the Moscow Kremlin, burned down after a suspected electrical fault. Newly re-elected President Vladimir Putin has pledged to improve the country?s aging infrastructure. Russians are jittery after a bomb in the Moscow metro killed 40 people last month, and any explosions rattle nerves.
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