August 22, 2002	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Saani 12,1423

MOSCOW, Aug 21: Rescue workers wrapped up their search on Wednesday through the rubble of a Moscow apartment block partially destroyed by an explosion which killed eight people and wounded several others, emergencies officials said.

Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said the final death toll in Tuesday night’s blast was eight, including two children, after a day-long operation pulled others free from the ruined building. At least seven people were hospitalised.

Officials said the explosion had probably been caused by a gas leak, dismissing early suspicions it may have been a bomb. But some residents said they had smelled gun powder and not gas after the explosion.

“According to preliminary information, there was a fire with a gas explosion in flat 28 on the second floor,” Moscow Prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov told NTV commercial television.

“It was not a canister of gas, but gas which people use to cook food on a gas stove,” he said.

Igor Babayevsky, the deputy head of Moscow’s emergencies department, told Russian television that the way the front of the five-storey building had collapsed pointed to weak construction and a high concentration of gas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched his Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu and the director of the FSB domestic security service, Nikolai Patrushev, to the site on hearing of the disaster.—Reuters