Moscow drug clinic fire kills at least 40 patients

MOSCOW, Dec 9 (Reuters) A fire at a Moscow drug rehabilitation clinic today killed at least 40 female patients whose attempts to flee were hampered by metal grilles blocking escape routes, emergency services said.

''The latest official figure we have at the moment is that 42 people were killed,'' Deputy Emergencies Minister Alexander Chupriyan told reporters outside Drug Treatment Hospital No 17 in southwest Moscow.

''Judging by the position of the bodies, people tried to get out but there was only one fire exit.'' All but two of the victims were young female drug addicts undergoing treatment at the clinic. A senior firefighter said it was likely the fire was caused by arson.

The ministry said it applied to a court earlier this year to close the hospital over fire safety violations including metal grilles on windows and staircases, but that the court turned down the request.

Previously Moscow's chief prosecutor had given the death toll as 43. The victims included two female medical staff. Ten people were injured, some of them seriously, emergency services said. More than 100 people were evacuated.

The victims were in an all-female ward on the second floor of the five-storey brick building. They were killed by inhaling deadly fumes from a small fire which broke out in the canteen on the same floor, emergency services said.

''There is a 90 per cent probability that it was arson,'' said Yuri Nenashev, head of the Emergencies Ministry fire safety directorate.

BUILDING UNSCATHED Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova told Reuters: ''One staircase was blocked by the fire and the other was blocked by a metal grille that firefighters had to remove.'' A Reuters reporter who was allowed within 100 metres (yards) of the building saw grilles on the windows of lower floors. Some of the windows were smashed but there was otherwise little evidence of fire damage.

The alarm was raised at 0412 (local time) this morning. Fire crews arrived in under 10 minutes and took only 20 minutes to extinguish the fire, officials said.

''It was a very particular building with five storeys and only one exit and bars on the windows because it was a drug treatment hospital,'' said Andrianova.

''We believe that people just did not raise the alarm in time because it was thick smoke and it only takes three breaths of that and people fall unconscious,'' she said.

Russia has seen several fatal fires at secure hospitals where drug addicts or mentally ill people are treated. They are often in old, neglected buildings where patients are held in secure conditions.

In December last year seven people died when a fire broke out in the night at a hospital near Moscow treating people for nervous disorders.

In March 2005 seven people were killed in a fire at a drug treatment centre in Samara, in the Volga River region of central Russia, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Nineteen people died in 1999 in a fire at a hospital for people with mental illnesses in the Leningrad region near Russia's second city of St Petersburg, the agency said.

REUTERS PB ND0946