| A total of 22 people were killed yesterday as a result of two powerful domestic gas explosions that occurred almost simultaneously in the morning in Dagestan and Chita. In the first case, the boiler room of a secondary school in the village of Manaskent, Karabudakhkent district, blew up. In Chita, the explosion completely destroyed the café building, in which there were 36 people at that moment. Rescuers and experts in both cases almost immediately declared that there was no talk of terrorist attacks. However, given the scale of the accidents, representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation were forced to comment on them yesterday. “At the moment, the investigation has no reason to talk about other reasons for these incidents,” said the Prosecutor General’s Office. “Most likely we are talking about violations during the operation of gas equipment.”
The explosion in Chita, which, according to the latest authorities, killed 18 people and injured the same number, thundered in the one-story building of the Onon cafe on Karl Marx Street at about 16.50 (10.50 Moscow time). When the first rescue vehicles and ambulances arrived at the wrong place, an operational-investigative group from the Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office for the Siberian Federal District was immediately called. The reinforced concrete building was completely destroyed, there were dozens of dead and wounded, and windows in houses were broken throughout the area. Naturally, at first the intelligence services put forward a version of a terrorist attack. But within a few hours it was refuted - rescuers found among the rubble four ruptured 50-liter gas cylinders standing in the kitchen of the cafe, and stated that in the first minutes of clearing the rubble they clearly smelled a garlicky smell, characteristic of a household gas explosion. True, it was not yet known why exactly the gas explosion occurred in the cafe. According to the investigation, the employees of the establishment, judging by the documents of the Chita State Supervision Authority, operated the gas equipment according to the instructions, in addition, all fire safety rules were observed in the building.
As for the explosion in the school in the Dagestan village of Manaskent, according to the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs, the situation was clear almost immediately. The explosion in the boiler room there occurred at about 11.25. The boiler room itself is located in a separate building, and the school was not damaged. However, a powerful explosion destroyed the school toilet located above the boiler room. At the time of the explosion, there were five students aged 14-15 years old. Four of them died on the spot, one was sent to the hospital. The boiler house worker, as it turned out, was going to the market at that time, and no one could notice the gas leak. Alexander SASHIN
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