Two people were killed in a blast and a subsequent fire on the ninth floor of a nine-story apartment building in Minsk’s Serabranka neighborhood on February 23, BelaPAN said.
According to the press office of the emergency management ministry, the accident was reported at 4:43 p.m. Upon arrival at the scene, firefighters found smoke and flames coming from windows of two apartments on the last floor of the number 85 building on Plyakhanava Street. The blaze was put out by 6 p.m. Rescuers discovered the bodies of two persons in one of the apartments, whose identities were not immediately known. Five other people were slightly injured in the accident.
The residents of all apartments in that stairwell and the households living in four apartments in the next stairwell had to be evacuated after engineers concluded that there was a threat of collapse.
It was not immediately clear what the cause of the blast was.
