The Hindu : Sabotage suspected in Russian gas blast; toll 23

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 17, 2004

International

International

Sabotage suspected in Russian gas blast; toll 23

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MARCH 16. An apparent natural gas explosion that destroyed a section of a large apartment block in northern Russia on Tuesday, killing at least 23 persons, was probably an act of sabotage, officials said.

The blast hit a wing of a nine-storey building in Arkhangelsk at 3 a.m. local time, when people were fast asleep. The wing collapsed burying beneath scores of residents. By afternoon 22 bodies were recovered and 24 survivors were pulled from the rubble. Sixteen persons injured in the incident were hospitalised. Some 20 more persons are feared to be still trapped under large prefabbed slabs that folded up like a stack of cards when the building collapsed. There were 45 flats in the destroyed section of the building.

Though explosions caused by leaking gas pipes have happened in Russia before, authorities refused to rule out terrorism in this case. Police were searching for two men suspected of having removed metal plugs from gas pipes in the destroyed building.

"Somebody had unscrewed plugs on gas mains in several apartment houses," a gas service official told Russian television. "We have plugged mains in two buildings, but were too late for this house."

PTI reports:

The building ``collapsed like a house of cards and there still could be many survivors under the debris,'' a rescue official told NTV, as a couple was rescued after five-hour efforts.

The local prosecutor has launched a case of criminal negligence resulting in loss of human life and property pointing to the gas leak as the main cause of the blast, though some believe a terror hand behind the blast as most of the residents were the families of police personnel, many of whom have been on Chechnya duty, NTV said.

``The possibility of an attack has not been ruled out,'' a spokesman from the prosecutor's office told the Interfax news agency.

According to the RBC business channel, the FSB security service experts have so far not found traces of explosive materials and there is a very strong smell of cooking gas, which was supplied to the building through pipes.I

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