MOSCOW, January 15 (RIA Novosti) - At least two people were killed on Tuesday in a residential gas explosion in Russia's Volgograd Region, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
"Unauthorized maintenance work on gas equipment probably caused the blast," a ministry spokesman said.
The cause of explosion in the town of Yelan is being investigated.
The blast was the fourth fatal gas explosion in a residential building during the past week. Eight people were killed in Kazan, capital of the Russian Volga republic of Tatarstan, on the night of January 9. Another six died in an explosion in the Stavropol territory in southern Russia early on January 14, and a resident of the Samara Region in Russia's Volga area was killed in the third blast hours later.