Hospital fire in Russia kills 21 people, several injured

21 people were killed and a further 20 were injured after a fire broke out at a psychiatric hospital in southern Russia, according to the country’s emergencies ministry.

“Nineteen bodies were found at the site of the fire, two other people succumbed to their wounds at the hospital,” a spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

The wooden hospital building was destroyed by the fire and a further 20 people were injured, the spokesman said. The fire broke out at the hospital in the village of Alferovka, in the region of Voronezh in the south of the country.

The cause of the blaze is not yet known.

Hospital workers told state-run media there were 140 people in the building, including 50 who were bedridden. At least 51 patients escaped unharmed.

The fire is the latest tragedy to hit a psychiatric institution in Russia, where outdated Soviet-era infrastructure is still in widespread use and managers often take a lax approach to fire safety.

Scores of people also die in house fires each year.

In September 2013, a fire at a psychiatric hospital in north-west Russia killed 37 people, while  another blaze in April while in 2009 156 people were killed in a nightclub fire in the city of Perm in one of the deadliest accidents in Russia’s modern history.