At least 25 people were killed in a fire at a gas station in the southern Russian region of Dagestan on Monday night, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing emergency medics.
The fire started at an auto repair shop on the side of a highway in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, and caused explosions that spread to the nearby gas station, officials said.
At least 66 people were injured, 10 of them critically, according to another Russian news agency, RIA, which quoted a Russian deputy health minister, Vladimir Fisenko.
The news agency Tass, citing a statement from the Russian emergency service, said it took firefighters more than three and a half hours to put out the fire, which covered an area of about 6,400 square feet.
Dagestan, a mostly Muslim region in the south of Russia on the northwest coast of the Caspian Sea, is known for the stark beauty of its mountain landscapes, for its many small ethnic groups and for a violent and long-simmering Islamist insurgency.