3 dead, 79 missing as gas explosion rocks high-rise

Three people were killed and another 79 were unaccounted for after a gas explosion rocked a residential building in Russia on Monday , leaving hundreds without a home in freezing temperatures on New Year ’ s Eve.An entire section of the 12 – storey residential building collapsed when a gas explosion tore through the high – rise in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk nearly 1 , 700 kilometres ( 1 , 050 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural mountains .

“ Three people have been pulled alive from the rubble and three are dead, ” Boris Dubrovsky , governor of the Chelyabinsk region where the city is located, said in a statement.
Officials said that the fate of 79 people was unclear , with police working to locate their whereabouts .

National television broadcast footage of the mangled heaps of concrete as hundreds of rescue workers combed the debris in temperatures of minus 18 Celsius ( minus 0 . 4 F ) .

In a sign of the seriousness of the situation , President Vladimir Putin ordered emergencies minister Yevgeny Zinichev and health minister Veronika Skvortsova to travel to Magnitogorsk to personally oversee the rescue operation .

The Soviet -era high – rise was built in 1973 and was home to around 1 , 100 people . The residents have been evacuated .

A total of 110 people were registered as residents of the affected section of the building , regional authorities said . Sixteen of them have been evacuated, and another 15 were not home at the time of the blast .

Deadly gas explosions are relatively common in Russia where much of the infrastructure dates back to the Soviet era and safety requirements are often ignored .

( AFP)

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