Several people have been injured in an accident at Russia's Baikonur space cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The accident happened when a roof collapsed and some reports have suggested that a number of people may have died. Some of the victims are thought to be trapped under the debris.
Three sections of the roof at the cosmodrome, which Russia uses for launching space satellites and rockets, collapsed in the accident and accident and emergency teams are at the scene trying to recover victims.
A spokesman for the space agency, Sergey Gorbunov, admitted there were casualties as a result of the roof collapse but would not speculate on the number of fatalities, if any.
The site, from which the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth was launched, was built in the 1950s and is the oldest launch site in the world.
Russian news agencies said that a maintenance crew of at least eight people was carrying out repairs on the building, constructed in the Soviet era for assembling and launching the Buran shuttle, at the time of the accident.
AFP