RUSSIA: A fire killed 28 children at a Russian school for the deaf yesterday, engulfing many as they slept, oblivious to alarms, in the second devastating school blaze here this week.
More than 100 children were also hurt when flames engulfed the boarding school in the southern republic of Dagestan, as Russians were still reeling from the death of 22 children in a fire that razed a Siberian school on Monday.
Adult survivors of yesterday's night-time fire told Russian television that evacuation of the children was slowed by the need to wake many of them individually and explain in sign language what was happening.
Several children, aged between seven and 14, died in their beds, local officials said.
An eyewitness, Mr Nabi Magomedov, told NTV television teachers had resorted to throwing children from the burning building on to mattresses below, and many had suffered fractures as a result.
NTV showed distraught teachers and relatives converging around the charred shell of the school, many crying and conversing in sign language. A hand-written note stuck to the window of a local hospital listed the dead and injured.
Officials in Dagestan, a small republic wedged between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian Sea, said a short-circuit may have sparked the fire, when electricity returned suddenly after high winds had caused a power cut.
Fire service officials said the strong wind had helped the blaze take hold of the building, and that teachers had delayed their call to the emergency services as they tried in vain to quench the fire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told the government to do everything possible to help victims' relatives and survivors of the catastrophic fire.
"The country is again shocked by a terrible tragedy," Mr Putin said.
An Emergencies Ministry plane carrying doctors and medical supplies was quickly dispatched from Moscow to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.
Mr Putin gave the same order on Monday after 22 children died and 10 were injured in the northern Siberian village of Sydybal, when fire gutted the local school. Faulty electrical wiring is suspected of causing the blaze, which residents said devastated the remote settlement of just 400 people.
Izvestia newspaper reported that fires damaged about 700 Russian schools last year, and the country has a dismal record for fire safety. Some 18,000 people here die each year in fires.