MOSCOW: Fifteen
people were killed and another six still missing after an illegally built dam
collapsed at a gold mine in a remote Siberian settlement on Saturday, in the
latest deadly accident to hit Russia. The dam on the Seiba River in the
Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk burst and flooded several cabins where more than
70 workers lived, Russian authorities said.

Icy and muddy
floodwaters hit the cabins located near the village of Shchetinkino at around
6:00 am as the workers were resting. About 300 people, six helicopters and six
boats were involved in a search and rescue mission but the operation was to be
suspended for the night, officials said. Officials said the dam had been built
in breach of safety rules and claimed that the authorities were not aware of
its existence.

President
Vladimir Putin ordered officials to provide assistance to the victims and
identify the reasons for the accident, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told
reporters. Investigators said they have opened a criminal probe into a breach
of safety rules. Six people were still missing, Alyona Aleksishina, spokeswoman
for the regional branch of the emergencies ministry, told AFP. A total of 16
victims received medical aid, and four of them were airlifted to a regional
hospital, authorities said.

A team of doctors
including a neurosurgeon were  dispatched
to the scene from the city of Krasnoyarsk, which is located some 4,000
kilometers east of Moscow. Footage broadcast on national television showed the
remote settlement surrounded by the woods and mountains, the ground covered in
light snow. Overall, about 180 workers were thought to be living at the remote
mining site.

Violation of
'every single norm'

An unidentified
worker from the mine told Govorit Moskva, a Moscow-based radio station, that
people had been caught by surprise. "People were sleeping, apparently they
did not even understand anything," he said. He described the accommodation
as hastily built cabins, adding: "That says it all." The worker said
there were four such dams in the area that had been built more than three years
ago, adding that smaller breaches had happened in the past.

The dam was built
in violation of "every single norm," the head of the local government,
Yury Lapshin, said in televised remarks. Rains could have eroded the dam,
officials said. The Krasnoyarsk region will observe a day of mourning on
Monday. A number of top regional officials including governor Alexander Uss,
prosecutors and inspectors went to the scene of the tragedy.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova was overseeing the delivery of aid to the injured. The dam belonged to the Sibzoloto holding company which has not released any comment on the incident so far. Deadly accidents are relatively common in Russia because of lax safety rules, bad management and Soviet-era infrastructure. In 2009, 75 people were killed in a massive flood at Russia's biggest hydroelectric plant in the Khakassia region of Siberia. - AFP