MOSCOW - Eight people died on Sunday when a fire ravaged a drug rehab centre in Russia's Altai region, investigators said, the latest tragedy to raise questions about security standards at the country's medical care institutions.
The bodies of eight people were found after authorities put out a blaze that broke out at the private drug rehab centre dubbed "Chisty List" (Clean Slate) sitting on the shores of a picturesque lake outside the city of Barnaul in the Altai region, investigators said in a statement.
Another six people from the private drug and alcohol abuse treatment centre in the village of Ozero Krasilovo were injured, said a spokesman for the regional emergencies ministry, Andrei Pozdnyakov.
The fire left the building completely gutted, he said. "Only the walls remained," Pozdnyakov told AFP, saying the rest of the patients were moved into a local school.
The emergencies ministry did not rule out negligence as a possible cause of the fire.
Every year fires kill scores of people in Russia, which suffers from outdated Soviet-era infrastructure and lax security procedures. Medical institutions and care facilities are especially vulnerable.
In September 2013, 37 people were killed when a blaze swept through a psychiatric hospital in northwest Russia.
In April last year, another fire killed 38 people, mostly psychiatric patients, at a hospital in the Moscow region.