Rescue workers yesterday wrapped up their search through the rubble of a Moscow apartment block partially destroyed by an explosion which killed eight people, emergencies officials said.
The explosion on Tuesday night destroyed the top four floors and 10 apartments of the five-storey block. The front section of the building collapsed on to the pavement, littering it with rubble, broken glass and belongings.
The final death toll was eight, including two children, after a day-long operation pulled others free from the ruined building. At least seven people were hospitalised.
Officials said the explosion had probably been caused by a gas leak, dismissing early suspicions it may have been a bomb.
But some residents said they had smelled gunpowder and not gas after the explosion.
"According to preliminary information, there was a fire with a gas explosion in flat 28 on the second floor," the Moscow Prosecutor, Mr Mikhail Avdyukov, told NTV commercial television.
"It was not a canister of gas, but gas which people use to cook food on a gas stove," he said.
Mr Igor Babayevsky of Moscow's emergencies department, told Russian television that the way the front of the five-storey building had collapsed pointed to weak construction and a high concentration of gas.
President Vladimir Putin dispatched his emergencies minister and the director of the domestic security service to the site on hearing of the disaster.
The explosion brought back memories of a series of huge explosions in apartment blocks in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 in which more than 300 people died.
Those attacks were blamed on Chechen separatist rebels who continue to battle Russian rule in their mostly Muslim region.
The rebels have always denied responsibility. But they did claim to be behind Russia's worst military air disaster - on Monday in Chechnya - when an army transport helicopter crashed killing more than 100 soldiers.
Russian military officials in Chechnya said the helicopter had been downed by a shoulder-launched missile.
Tuesday night's explosion in Moscow happened at around 11 p.m. Russian media said 166 people were in the apartment building at the time.
Teams from the domestic security service investigated the scene with sniffer dogs.
Gas blasts are frequent in Russia, where the use of ageing gas cookers is common and safety procedures are often ignored. - (Reuters)