Death Toll Climbs in Aftermath of Explosion in Russian Apartment Building

The death toll in Russia’s second apartment explosion in as many weeks over what the authorities say was a gas leak has risen to two.

The early-Monday blast in the former mining town of Shakhty follows the collapse of segments of an apartment block in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk in late December where 39 people were killed. Authorities said that explosion on New Year’s Eve also occurred because of a gas leak.

“The death toll has increased to two people. A dead woman has been found,” state-run TASS news agency quoted an unnamed Emergency Situations Ministry official as saying Tuesday.

Emergency officials in the Rostov region confirmed the death toll, adding that three others remain unaccounted for.

Seven people were injured and 140 evacuated from the 9-story building built in 1993 in the town some 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow.

In a separate incident in Bryansk near Moscow, three people were reportedly injured on Tuesday morning in a gas explosion in a one-story wooden house.