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MOSCOW - A gas explosion killed six people at an apartment block in southern Russia on Monday, a regional emergency services spokeswoman said.
Rescuers said four apartments in Zheleznovodsk, a spa resort 1500km south of Moscow at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, were destroyed in the blast, news agency TASS reported. Nearly 60 people were forced from their homes.
"It was cold and it appears an elderly 70-year old man was using natural gas from his stove burners to warm the apartment. Then there was an explosion," Russian television showed emergency worker Igor Oder saying.
Television pictures showed one section of the top floor of a concrete apartment building blown out, but no signs of fire.
RIA news agency quoted the local emergencies service as saying the dead included two girls, born in 2001 and 2007.
The spokeswoman in Stavropol told Reuters emergency workers had rescued eight people.
Several hours later, a powerful gas blast ripped through an apartment block in the town of Novokuibyshevsk in the Volga River region of Samara, RIA reported.
It said seven people were wounded, including one who had been seriously burned. No one was reported dead.
Gas explosions have become commonplace in Russia's ageing Soviet-era apartment buildings. Last week eight people were killed in a suspected gas explosion in an apartment building in Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan autonomous region.
- REUTERS
