Second (and Third) Hospital Blaze in Russia

Via Sky News:

Updated: 11:11, Sunday December 10, 2006

Nine mental patients have died after a fire swept through a psychiatric hospital in the second major blaze in Russia in two days.

Hospital officials tried to put out the fire at the clinic in the town of Taiga in the Kemerovo region in central Siberia.

Emergency services were not called until 90 minutes after the fire broke out, a government spokesman said.

Fifteen patients were taken to hospital, said Valery Korchagin, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

On Saturday, 45 women were killed in a fire at a Moscow drug treatment centre killed 45.

Update: Authorities are naming arson as the most likely cause of the blaze, according to Lenta.ru. Lenta.ru also mentions a third arson attack,on a mental hospital in Tver Oblast.