Three die in Siberian hostel fire

NOVOSIBIRSK, March 6 (RIA Novosti, Maxim Koshmarchuk) - Three people have died and five, including three children, been hospitalized after a fire broke out in a hostel for workers with the local communal services in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a spokesman for local prosecutors said Monday.

One of the injured is in a critical condition with 90% burns, the spokesman said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire blaze on Monday morning on the fifth floor of a nine-story building in the city, which is about 2,000 miles east of Moscow. A total of 400 residents were evacuated from the building, the spokesman said, adding that prosecutors have launched probe into the incident.

A wave of fires has engulfed Russia's hostels, which provide temporary accommodation to Russian students, employees and their families, since the beginning of the year. Four people died in one incident in Saratov on the Volga River and three in St. Petersburg, while there were also fatalities in Khabarovsk in the Far East, Barnaul in southern Siberia, and in Irkutsk in central Siberia.