One cigarette burns eight people alive

Seven more burnt bodies were found on the stair landing – four males and three females

The tragedy occurred in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia yesterday. A very strong fire broke out in a five-storied brick house at 9:00 p.m. The fire started in one of apartments on the second storey. The fire brigade quickly evacuated 60 tenants from the building – the people were accommodated at their relatives and friends'. According to the chairman of the Emergency Department of the Krasnoyarsk region, Sergei Zinoviev, the process to extinguish the fire was complicated with a lack of fire-fighting equipment: “Firemen tried to penetrate into the building, but it was a very hard goal to achieve: the smoke was very thick. Unfortunately, there is no gas-protecting service in the town,” he said.

When firemen eventually made their way to the second storey of the building, they saw a horrible scene in one of the rooms. A nine-year-old girl was lying dead on the floor. Seven more burnt bodies were found on the stair landing – four males and three females. It has already been determined that it was a lit cigarette that started the fire in the building.

Another large-scale fire took place in Moscow yesterday. The fire gripped a two-storied commercial complex of the well-known Cherkizovsky Market. The flame was raging on the entire square of the building – over 1,000 square meters. A lot of market vendors worried about their goods and refused to leave their workplaces, which complicated firemen's work. Thousands of market visitors were staying behind the cordon line. The police had to block traffic on neighboring streets because of the crowd.

It took firemen three hours to extinguish the fire, which destroyed the shoe and clothes warehouse. No one was injured as a result of the incident. Law-enforcement officers say that the cause of the fire on the market was arson.