At least eight people have died in a fire in an office building near Moscow, including two who jumped from the building to escape the flames.
Video taken in the town of Fryazino on Monday showed smoke and flames billowing out of at least three of the building’s top floors and a group of four people huddled around a broken window trying to escape.
“Two men jumped out of the window while trying to escape. Unfortunately, they died. The fate of the two women who were on the eighth floor is being clarified,” the Moscow regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said.
About 30 companies rent space in the office block, two of which had employees working there at the time of the fire, Vorobyov said. “There were also oxygen cylinders in the building, which triggered explosions. This led to the collapse of the floor slabs,” he added.
The companies renting offices in the building include the Platan Research Institute, which produces electronics.
The Platan Research Institute is among several Russian companies sanctioned by the US Treasury for meddling in foreign elections, carrying out malicious cyber operations and undermining security abroad. The Treasury listing said the Platan Research Institute is based at the same address as the building that caught fire.
Russian newspaper Kommersant said the Institute develops equipment used by Russia’s military, including in fighter jets, bombers and helicopters, as well as in missiles, “all types of nuclear submarine missile carriers’, long-range radar and anti-aircraft missile systems.
Ruselectronics, the Platan Research Institute’s parent company, denied that the company was affected by Monday’s blaze. In a statement published by Tass, state-owned Ruselectronics insisted that the building had passed to private ownership in the 1990s and that the institute was no longer a tenant.
State news agency Tass said on Monday that the fire was caused by a malfunctioning electrical system.
The blaze spread to about 5,000 sq metres before being contained, according to emergency services.
Deadly fires are common in Russia, which has for years suffered from lax safety standards and struggled to modernise older buildings with alarms and firefighting equipment.
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A criminal case has been opened and investigators are establishing the circumstances of the fire, the governor said.