RUSSIA: Russian officials said yesterday that sabotage was the probable cause of a gas explosion that killed at least 29 people and buried dozens more under the ruins of an apartment block in the northern city of Arkhangelsk reports Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow.
Hundreds of rescuers with sniffer dogs pulled 23 people alive from the ruins, and were combing the mass of twisted metal and shattered concrete for about 20 missing people last night. Police said they were looking for two men suspected of removing metal safety valves from the heating system of the nine-storey block shortly before it exploded at around 3a.m. local time.
Heating engineers discovered safety valves missing from several other Arkhangelsk apartment blocks, and investigators said they suspected deliberate sabotage because the valves had little value as scrap metal.