Frame from NTV Channel

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Arsonists Target Children’s Home in Mindless Arkhangelsk Attack

Created: 23.09.2004 17:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:51 MSK

MosNews

Thugs in the North Russian city of Arkhangelsk threw two bottles containing inflammable liquid through the windows of a children’s home on Thursday morning. Fortunately, no one was injured.

There were nine two- and three-year-old children in an area of the ground floor where the subsequent fire broke, the Interfax news agency reported. All the children, many of them toddlers, were safely evacuated before firefighters arrived at the scene.

In all, there were 104 young children and 13 adults in the building at the time of the incident. Five fire crews extinguished the fire.

In April 2003 Russia schools were hit by a spate of school fires. 22 children died in a fire that engulfed a village school in Siberia and in another harrowing incident two days later 28 children were killed in a fire at a boarding school for the deaf. However, those incidents were blamed on a lack of safety regulations, unlike Thursday’s incident.

The latest attack seems all the more mindless in the wake of a terrorist attack on a school in Beslan that horrified Russians.