Death toll jumps to 39 in Russian blast

The number of confirmed dead from a New Year’s Eve gas explosion in a Russian apartment block jumped to 39 yesterday as rescuers recovered more bodies from the rubble of the partially collapsed building. Six children were among the dead, the emergency situations ministry said in a statement, and four people were still unaccounted for.

Rescuers have been braving temperatures as low as minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit) to search through mangled concrete and metal at the site in the Ural mountains city of Magnitogorsk. Six people including two children have been rescued at the site, but no survivors have been found since Tuesday, when a 10-month-old boy was found in what officials described as a “New Year’s miracle”.

The explosion tore through the 10-storey building in the industrial city nearly 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) east of Moscow in the early hours of Monday. All the survivors were in a stable condition, said the office of Chelyabinsk regional governor Boris Dubrovsky, who visited several of them in hospital on Thursday.

Dubrovsky’s office said he had also approved new financial assistance to the victims, including payments of one million rubles ($14,500, 12,700 euros) to the families of those killed and 400,000 rubles for those injured. Families who lost their apartments would receive payments of up 500,000 rubles, as well as being provided with new homes.