Russian cafe blast 90 dead

MOSCOW, Russia news : Ninety people were killed when a blast ripped through a cafe in the Russian Ural city of Perm, Russian news agencies reported Saturday quoting local officials.

“Ninety people were killed, bodies were evacuated from the scene,” the Perm region’s public security minister Igor Orlov said as quoted by official media.

Some 60 people were rushed to a hospital from the stricken Lame Horse bar, a regional emergency ministry official said as quoted by news agency.

The blast hit the cafe as some 200 people, mostly the cafe’s employees and their families, were partying inside to celebrate the bar’s eighth anniversary, local police said as quoted by media, suggesting that the explosion was caused by a fireworks rocket gone wrong.

A police source told media that most victims succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning in the crush as the panicked crowd rushed to escape.

Local officials ruled out the possibility that the blast was due to a terrorist act, Interfax reported.

“The accident was due to a violation of instructions when launching fireworks,” senior judicial official Vladimir Markin was quoted as saying.