MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Emergency services are evacuating students and teachers from the Peoples Friendship University of Russia in southwestern Moscow after a fire broke out earlier in the building's basement.
A source in the Moscow fire fighting service said the blaze broke out in the university's bomb shelter, a relic from the Cold War era. No one has been reported injured.
Tragedy struck the university in 2003 when a major fire broke out at a university dormitory, killing 44 and injuring 156.
A wave of fires swept Russia's hostels, which provide temporary accommodation to students, workers and their families, at the beginning of this year. Four people died in one incident in the Volga city of Saratov 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.
