Tenant prone to suicide lived in collapsed house in Astrakhan, other residents assert

Residents of the house in Astrakhan, part of which has collapsed as a result of explosion, assert that the local resident, prone to suicide, could be involved in the incident. Thus, they confirm the position of the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), which included a gas explosion, a suicide attempt and a terror act into the main versions.

Let us remind you that today at about 1:10 p.m. in the city of Astrakhan a gas explosion caused a collapse of nine floors of the second section of No. 151 Nikolai Ostrovsky Street. According to recent reports, 12 persons have suffered, including two children. The fate of 11 other tenants is still unknown. In the evening, rescuers heard voices from under the rubbles of reinforcement and concrete of the collapsed section.

One of the tenants of the collapsed section was "suicidally inclined, and other tenants were constantly afraid that he would blow them up," a pensioner, who asked not to give her name, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Earlier, Sergey Bobrov, the head of the Investigatory Department for the Astrakhan Region of the ICRF, said the cause of the explosion, which collapsed a section of the apartment building in Astrakhan, could be in a suicide attempt of one of the tenants.

Now, residents of the collapsed block are temporarily accommodated in the neighbouring school No. 49. The surviving sections will be carefully examined, after which a decision will be made either to re-populate or demolish the house.

All the time before the decision the whole house will be guarded by reinforced police units to prevent looting.

A photo report of the "Caucasian Knot" from the place of the incident may be found in the Section "Photo Albums".

"I'm here, very close to this house; I'm still in shock from the thunder; it was heard how slabs fell on one another, shaking the nearby buildings; many people were crying, when they saw what happened; fragments and debris flew very far. There are many versions: some people say gas, others - that the explosion occurred in the shop on the ground floor of this house. It's awful, indeed awful. I admire the courage of fire fighters: when many slabs could easily fall down, they rushed into the wreckage," the blogger ko-07 describes the situation in the Livejournal.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that earlier a united mobile unit of the rescue centre No. 495 was sent to Astrakhan, as well as rescue units from the Volgograd Region and Kalmykia. The Russian Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) has sent two aircrafts with rescuers, dog experts and psychologists from Moscow to Astrakhan to work at the venue. The rescue operation will continue throughout the night.