At least four people, all supposedly homeless people looking for shelter, died in a fire in an abandoned house on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Ulitsa near Moscow’s Belorusskaya metro station early Monday, emergency officials said.
An Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman told The Moscow Times that five of the nine people living in the building were rescued. He denied earlier reports that six people died in the fire.
The fire engulfed an area of 1,000 square meters in a two-story house scheduled for demolition. The 15 fire brigades that fought the blaze managed to prevent it from spreading to an adjacent four-story office building, the spokesman said.
The men probably started the fire to get warm, he said.
(MT)
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