Dozens of foreign medical students were hospitalized after a fire believed to have been caused by a short circuit ripped through the seventh floor of a Moscow dormitory on Wednesday night, local media reported.
Thirty-six people, all of them foreign, were still in the hospital on Thursday afternoon, 21 of them in serious condition, state news agency RIA Novosti said. No deaths have been reported.
A spokesperson for the Emergency Situations Ministry told state media that more than 100 fire violations were found at the reported 16-floor dormitory designated for foreigners at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University.
The students were from the African countries of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, as well as the Asian nations of Malaysia and Turkmenistan, among others, the Interfax news agency reported.