Scores killed in Russian nightclub

More than 100 people are reported to have been killed and 140 others injured after a blast caused by fireworks ripped through a nightclub in Perm, a Russian city located near the Ural mountains, police officials have said. The explosion occurred in the Lame Horse bar in the centre of Perm, where over 200 people were partying early on Saturday, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted a local police official as saying. "As of now, there are 102 dead and 134 injured," a regional emergency situations ministry spokesman in Perm was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying. Law enforcement officials ruled out the possibility that the blast was a terrorist act. "The accident was due to a violation of instructions when launching fireworks," Vladimir Markin, a senior judicial official, was quoted as saying by Interfax. "We are not talking about a terrorist attack, we are talking about a failure to observe fire regulations," Itar-Tass news agency quoted a spokesman for the prosecutor-general's main investigative unit as saying. 'Caused by pyrotechnics' Al Jazeera's Neave Barker, reporting from Moscow, said: "Details are sketchy at the moment but several different Russian news agencies are all reporting that up to 94 people may have been killed while several others are saying that over 100 people may have been killed in total in the incident. "Officials have been cited as saying that the incident may have been caused by pyrotechnics that caused an explosion leading to a significant loss of life." A police source told RIA Novosti that most victims succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning as the panicked crowd rushed to escape. Russian state-run television channel Vesti-24 showed charred bodies piled on top of each other in the snow-covered street outside the club, where firemen and investigators cleared debris and recovered bodies. The blast follows a deadly train bombing last week, which killed 26 and injured over 100 on a luxury train travelling between Moscow and St Petersburg, for which Chechen armed groups claimed responsibility. Perm, the sixth largest city in Russia, has a population of 1.2 million people.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies