The aunt of a 12-year-old girl presumed dead in the Russian mall fire has spoken of the heartbreaking final call she made from within the blazing building.
A security guard switched off the fire alarm at a Russian mall where dozens of people were killed in a catastrophic blaze, the country’s anti-corruption Investigative Committee has revealed.
Viktoria ‘Vika’ Pochankina told aunt Evgenia that ‘everything is burning‘ during the desperate conversation as dozens of people were trapped inside the shopping centre, adding: ‘The doors are blocked. I can’t go out, I can’t breathe.’
Her shocking testimony comes as new photographs from the scene have revealed the devastation the fire left after tearing through the Winter Cherry mall and leaving dozens dead.
During the saddening call with the young girl trapped inside the building, her aunt Evgenia told the terrified child: ‘Vika, take off your clothes, cover your nose’.
But Vika replied: ‘Auntie, tell all my family I love them. Tell mum that I loved her…’ before the call ended abruptly.
Evgenia added: ‘The school vacations have just begun and almost all their class was there – about 10 people. Two or three parents and a teacher.
‘The teacher left the kids in the cinema and went with parents in the shopping mall. So all the adults survived…’
It comes as dozens of children remain missing and feared dead today after the appalling tragedy in Siberia.
The latest official death toll from the Kemerovo inferno is 64 with 47 injured and many still unaccounted for.
Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov told a televised briefing that six of the bodies have not yet been recovered. Puchkov would not immediately say how many of the victims were children as only 15 people have been identified. Ten people have been sent to hospital.
Some of the victims of the blaze were reportedly burned alive in a furnace of up to 700C.