A fire at a clinic for drug addicts in the southeastern Kazakh city of Taldykorgan killed 38 people today, the Central Asian state's government said.
In a statement it said that workers evacuated and rescued another 40 people from the facility, built in 1951 using blocks of pressed cane stems. The cause of the fire was unknown.
"Prime Minister Karim Masimov has ordered a special government commission be set up to investigate the incident", Masimov's spokeswoman Ainagul Shakirova said..
The facility is one of many state-run healthcare institutions offering treatment and counseling to drug addicts in the former Soviet republic which lies on the main drug trafficking route from Afghanistan to Western Europe.
There are about 55,000 officially registered drug addicts in the 16-million nation where, in addition to smuggled Afghan opium and herion, local wild-growing cannabis is available in abundance.
Reuters