Many used their phones to plead for help, among them Victoria Pochankina, an 11-year-old girl on a class trip to the Siberian shopping centre where a fire on Sunday killed at least 64 people, many of them children. Relatives recounted hauntingly similar stories of speaking by phone to loved ones trapped in the flames – but being unable to help them. “Lena called from there,” Vostrikov told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “She shouted, ‘Help us, rescue us, we have been locked up.”The fire started at about 5pm on the fourth floor of the shopping centre, which includes a three-screen cinema complex, a skating rink and an entertainment centre for children. An aerial view of emergency services cleaning up the wreckage at the scene of the shopping centre fire in Kemerovo.

Source: The Irish Times March 27, 2018 09:33 UTC