Magnitogorsk Investigators Find No Sign Of Explosives As Rescuers Continue Work

Radio Free Europe Documents & Publications

January 2, 2019 01:31 GMT

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Russia's Investigative Committee has said it has found no evidence that the explosion that caused part of a high-rise apartment building to collapse in the city of Magnitogorsk on December 31 was an act of terrorism.

In a statement issued on January 1, the committee said that "in connection with various media reports we must say that at the present moment in the investigation, no signs of explosives or their components have been found in the rubble."

The Investigative Committee continues to investigate a natural-gas explosion as the most likely cause of the tragedy that killed at least nine people. About 30 others remain unaccounted for as rescue operations continue in frigid conditions.

Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin has set up an investigative group of some 100 officials to work on the case.

January 2 has been declared a day of morning in Chelyabinsk Oblast, where Magnitogorsk is located.

On January 1, an infant found by rescuers alive in the rubble some 35 hours after the explosion was flown to Moscow for medical treatment.

The TASS news agency reported the infant was found lying in his crib wrapped in layers of blankets, which likely saved his life.

The child -- identified as Ivan Fokin -- suffered frostbite, broken bones, and a head injury.

His mother and father survived the explosion and subsequent collapse of their apartment. The father, Yevgeny, has dubbed his son "a New Year's miracle."

Authorities had been forced to temporarily halt most of the rescue operations because of fears the efforts would shift rubble and cause more sections of the building to collapse.

"There is a real risk that more sections of the building will collapse," Russian Emergency Situations Minister Yevgeny Zinichev said on January 1.

Later, rescuers removed some dangerous segments of the building and resumed their operations.

Rescuers had braved temperatures as low as minus 17 degree Celsius through the night in an effort to locate victims.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said that 26 apartments with 46 residents were destroyed in the collapse.

President Vladimir Putin travelled to the on December 31 and met with local officials before visiting some of the injured at a nearby hospital.

"It is in the character of our people, despite New Year's festivities, to remember to think of the dead and wounded at this moment," Putin said at the hospital.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the creation of a government commission to provide aid to the victims of the disaster.

Nine bodies have been recovered from the rubble. Ambulance service officials said five people, including two children, were hospitalized.

Frigid weather plus the danger that the remaining part of the building might collapse are major challenges being faced by the rescue teams, Dubrovsky said.

Special large heaters were brought in to try to keep any possible survivors from freezing to death as the rescue operations continue.

"We must work as quickly as we can since temperatures do not give us any time to linger," Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Pavel Baryshev told journalists.

According to the regional government, the explosion took place at 6:10 a.m. local time in a complex of apartment buildings that was built in 1973 and houses some 1,100 people.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said on its website that in all, 48 apartments from the third to the 10th floor in the building's central part were damaged by the explosion.

Magnitogorsk -- an industrial town of some 400,000 people -- is located some 1,700 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, TASS, Interfax, and RIA-Novosti

RFE/RL (http://www.rferl.org/author/19023.html)

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