Russia mourns victims of deadly fire in Siberia

MOSCOW (AP) — Flags flew at half-staff across Russia on Wednesday as the country mourned the victims — many of them children — of a shopping mall fire in Siberia.

The blaze engulfed the four-story mall in the city of Kemerovo on Sunday while it was packed with parents and children on the first weekend of the school recess.

Investigators identified a short circuit as a possible cause and said the emergency exits were locked shut, hampering an evacuation. Some of the victims, many of them young children, died inside a locked movie theater.

Wednesday was declared a day of mourning in Russia, and thousands of people have been bringing flowers and stuffed toys to makeshift memorials across the country.

The investigators have released 21 bodies for burial. The first funerals of the victims are to be held Wednesday morning in Kemerovo, a city of half a million that has been paralyzed with grief.

Thousands of angry and distraught residents rallied on Kemerovo's main square on Tuesday for 10 hours, demanding that local officials conduct a full and transparent probe. Some locals mistrust the official reports that put the death toll at 64.

Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Vladlen Aksyonov told the RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday that the bodies of all 64 victims have been recovered and that no one is unaccounted-for.