Fire engulfs Russian boarding school to kill 28 deaf children

Twenty-eight deaf schoolchildren died and more than 100 were injured yesterday in a fire at their school in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, the second such disaster to hit the country in four days.

The fire broke out in the early hours at the boarding school in Makhachkala, on the Caspian sea. The sleeping children, aged between six and 15, were not disturbed by the blaze, and teachers frantically tried to rescue scores of pupils from the smoke that enveloped their dormitories.

Shamil Kerimov, a Dagestani government official, said: "We never had such a tragedy before."

He said four teachers had to shake each one of the 166 deaf pupils awake, and even then the children were disorientated. They leapt from the second storey on to mattresses laid out on the ground below.

A strong wind spread the fire in minutes through the two-storey brick building which had a wooden roof.

Mr Kerimov said 113 children were in hospital, 17 with serious burns, and eight in intensive care.

A day of mourning is to be observed across Dagestan.

On Monday, 22 children died when a similar blaze ripped through a wooden secondary school in Yakutia, Siberia. Old electrical wiring and a delayed response from the nearest fire service, 12 miles away, have been blamed.

Witnesses raised similar suspicions in Dagestan yesterday. Zoya Danayeva, director of the school, said: "One of the nurses noticed flames coming from the electricity points. The first thing to investigate is the wiring."

President Vladimir Putin sent emergency aid to Dagestan yesterday, while his prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, ordered fire safety inspections in all Russia's schools.