At least one person was killed in a huge fire at the Mega Khimki shopping center in the northern Moscow suburb of Khimki, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said on Friday.
The fire affects “an area of 7,000 square meters,” announced the minister, Alexandr Kurenkov, on the Telegram platform.
Firefighters managed to control the fire about two and a half hours after it started, when the shopping center, one of the largest in Russia, with an area of 175,000 square meters, had not yet opened to the public, Russian news agencies reported. . .
Initially, the Russian emergency services said they suspected “a criminal act” could be behind the fire.
But later, Russian news agencies also pointed to a possible violation of safety regulations as the possible origin of the flames.
The incident began in a construction materials supermarket, which was undergoing renovations, and where welding work was being carried out.
“The workers were unable to extinguish the flames and left the building,” an emergency services source told the official TASS news agency.
Videos posted on social media show a large fire and people fleeing a burning building into a parking lot.
Source: TSF
