The death toll in the explosion that toppled part of an apartment building in northern Russia reached 41 on Wednesday, the Emergency Situations Department said.
Rescuers worked through the night to pull bodies from the rubble of the building, which was torn apart by an apparent natural-gas explosion on Tuesday. Forty bodies were recovered and one woman who had been pulled out alive,died overnight in a hospital, said a ministry duty officer in Arkhangelsk.
Police searched for two homeless men suspected of triggering the deadly blast by stealing lids from gas pipes to sell for scrap metal.
The explosion ripped through a prefabricated building in this northern city before dawn on Tuesday, destroying an entire nine-storey section from top to bottom and leaving dozens of people trapped in the rubble. Twenty-four people were rescued, the duty officer said.
Emergency situations ministry spokesperson Irina Andriyanova said up to 63 people could have been in the section at the time of the explosion. – Sapa-AP