RUSSIA: PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN VISITS THE SCENE OF THE EXPLOSION WHICH WRECKED A BLOCK OF FLATS HOUSING MILITARY PERSONNEL

Record ID: 649377

  • Title: RUSSIA: PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN VISITS THE SCENE OF THE EXPLOSION WHICH WRECKED A BLOCK OF FLATS HOUSING MILITARY PERSONNEL
  • Date: 16th November 1996
  • Summary: (NOVEMBER 17, 1996) (RTV) SLV RESCUE WORKER DIGGING CORPSE OUT OF RUBBLE 2.00 LV PIECE OF WALL BEING LIFTED BY CRANE 2.03 SV BODY BEING ZIPPED INTO BODYBAG 2.09
  • Embargoed: 1st December 1996 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: KASPIYSK, DAGESTAN, RUSSIA
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Crime,Disasters,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA247XT3LXOM5VKEV7T215BMEK6
  • Story Text: Rescue workers in Russia's southern republic of Dagestan have been frantically sifting through rubble looking for survivors of a blast, feared to be the work of saboteurs, that wrecked a block of flats housing military personnel.
    Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin flew to the scene after promising a thorough investigation into the disaster.
    The death toll from the explosion, which happened early on Saturday (November 16) had reached 24, including nine children, by Sunday afternoon, a local official said.
    Other Russian news reports earlier put the death toll at up to 32. Tass said a third of the Caspian region's border guards may have been wiped out in the explosion.
    A spokesman for Dagestani authorities said 24 dead and eight injured people had been pulled from the ruins of the eight- storey building and 35 were still assumed to be in the rubble.
    Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin flew to the small port by the Caspian Sea on Sunday after promising a thorough investigation into the disaster.
    The blast occurred while residents, mostly families of border guards and airforce officers, were sleeping.
    Rescue workers, including teams flown in from Moscow, used cranes, sniffer dogs and electric drills in their hunt for survivors. Russian television said that by Sunday afternoon they were dragging out mostly dead bodies.
    Regional authorities have declared Sunday and Monday official days of mourning in Dagestan, which borders the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya.
    Some officials said there might be a link between the explosion and Chechnya, where an uneasy peace is holding after a 21-month bloody conflict between Russian forces and separatists.
    Russia's Interior Ministry said it had not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist action, and Tass quoted official sources as saying it might be a gangland revenge attack linked to a regional crackdown on arms and caviar smuggling.
    President Boris Yeltsin, recovering from heart surgery, has sent his condolences to relatives of the dead and the government has set up a commission under a deputy prime minister, Oleg Lobov, to investigate the causes of the blast.
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