Charges filed in Moscow market collapse
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-25 08:58

The director of a Moscow market where the roof collapsed, killing at least 61 people, was charged with negligence, prosecutors said Friday, as hope faded for finding more survivors after Europe's second most deadly such accident this winter.

Rescue personnel work on the scene of a collapsed market building in Moscow, Friday, Feb. 24, 2006. Power shovels scooped up tons of rubble at the Moscow market where the collapse of its roof on Thursday killed at least 57 people and officials said there was virtually no hope of anyone still alive under the wreckage.[AP]

Hundreds of workers labored around the clock to clear the enormous mound of concrete and steel at the Basmanny market using power shovels and other heavy equipment — an indication of the limited hopes that anybody was alive underneath.

Prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev said the market's director, Mark Mishiyev, had been charged with negligence leading to deaths, which carries a maximum sentence of at least three years.

Zuyev also said prosecutors had ordered an analysis by explosives experts and a comprehensive construction analysis would follow.

Officials had all but ruled out terrorism as the cause of the collapse, saying it was probably due to the buildup of heavy snow, design flaws or maintenance errors.

Mayor Yuri Luzhkov held out little hope for finding anybody alive in the wreckage.

"Maybe there is some kind of zone where there may be people, but the probability of this is very small," Luzhkov said.

Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said late Friday that the death toll had reached 60, but Russian news agencies cited Luzhkov as saying that 61 were killed.

Authorities had said 57 bodies were recovered from the wreckage and one man died of his injuries Friday. It was unclear whether the new figure was due to the finding of more bodies or deaths among the injured. Reports of injuries ranged from 21 to 60.

Yevgeny Yevdokin, the city's chief anesthesiologist, said most of the injured were in critical condition and he described traumas ranging from head, chest and stomach injuries to broken limbs.

Virtually all the victims were workers from former Soviet republics, among the thousands who have poured into the Russian capital to fill low-paying jobs such as those at the city's markets.

At least 22 victims were from Azerbaijan, said Shamil Kasayev, an Azerbaijani Embassy official at a makeshift morgue near the market. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed leader of Moscow's Azerbaijani community as saying the number was closer to 40.

Kasayev said the government would cover all the costs of transporting the bodies — an expense few migrants could afford, even with the $3,500 one-time payment the Moscow city government has pledged to provide the family of each victim.

Emergency officials said it was impossible to say how many people had been in the market, where produce, meat and dairy products were sold along with household goods, in east-central Moscow when it collapsed.

Survivors and witnesses said up to 100 people could have been inside conducting wholesale business or simply sleeping in the building. Market traders described a cavernous building and said the basement had been transformed into a huge warehouse for fruits and vegetables that vendors from other markets trolled nightly for produce they could sell in turn.

The market was designed by Nodar Kancheli, the same architect who drafted the plans for Moscow's Transvaal water park, where the roof collapsed in February 2004, killing 28 people. Prosecutors have blamed that collapse on design flaws.

The RIA-Novosti news agency reported also quoted Zuyev as earlier that prosecutors had written the market director in December about maintenance violations, but he did not specify what they were.

Luzhkov said the city had already been planning to tear down the market and build a new, modern shopping mall in its place.

The tragedy came nearly a month after the roof collapsed over an exhibition hall in Katowice, Poland, apparently under the weight of the heavy, icy snow, killing 65 people.