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Talk:2003 Peoples' Friendship University of Russia fire

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This news report was reported by The Herald, but the link is now broken mentioning the article, I have posted it here with the credits as a reference.

This is the link: http://ww1.theherald.co.uk/news/5179-print.shtml

This is the article title: Students burned alive at Moscow campus

This is the reporter: VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Moscow November 25 2003

A pre-dawn fire swept through a run-down Russian dormitory for quarantined foreign students yesterday, trapping many behind permanently locked exits and causing some to leap from the five-storey building. Thirty-six students died and nearly 200 were injured, some from frostbite after fleeing half-naked into the bitter cold. The students – from Asia, Africa and Latin America – had just arrived and were awaiting medical checks before class. "It was like a horrible nightmare," Abdallah Bong, a student from Chad. "We saw them crying for help and jumping out of the windows, and we could do nothing to save them." Bong and other witnesses said fire engines were slow to arrive, jammed into a narrow access road blocked by parked cars. "Students had to do it all themselves, holding mattresses for those who were jumping out," said Nafafe Tengna, a journalism student from Guinea. The fire, believed to have been caused by an electrical fault, engulfed the building at People's Friendship University. It burned for more than three hours, though Yevgeny Bobylyov, a fire department spokesman, insisted firefighters had arrived on time and did their job well. Flames gutted most of the dormitory's upper levels. Smoke poured from windows as wet snow fell in the darkness. The fire left the concrete walls streaked with soot, and nearby trees caked with ice from the water used to extinguish the blaze. Once a showpiece of Soviet patronage of the third world, the university declined with the 1991 fall of communism. Nevertheless it continued to draw students from poor nations with its low tuition fees, such as £750 a year for medical school. Students said the dead and injured were from China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Tahiti, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Angola, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Kazakhstan, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Peru and Malaysia. The Chinese foreign ministry said 34 Chinese students were injured and 17 were missing. "A man from Ecuador shattered himself and died when he jumped out of the fifth floor," said Adam Rosales, a 22-year-old Peruvian student, gazing in shock at the blackened shell. Lubov Zhomova of the health firectorate said 36 people died and 197 others were injured, 57 of them in serious or grave condition. Early investigations pointed to an electrical problem, Rashid Nurgaliyev, the deputy interior minister, told Vladimir Putin, the president, at a cabinet session. Some bystanders said the fire could have been started by electric heaters used by students to keep warm. The university aimed to offer a strict Marxist curriculum to students from developing nations. V******, 22, a student from Mauritius, described the school's accommodation as "miserable". He and other students said one of the dormitory's two stairways was permanently locked, making an emergency exit more difficult. With stipends shrinking to almost nothing, many foreign students trade goods to make money, and already cramped dormitories are often packed with bags and bundles. Russia has 18,000 fire deaths a year, or 12.5 per 100,000, compared with 600 in the UK, or one per 100,000 people.–AP DavidMinhPham (talk) 10:25, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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--JeffGBot (talk) 06:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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