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Fire destroys church, kills two in Tajikistan

Jan. 17, 2005

A fire on Monday destroyed a Russian Orthodox church in northern Tajikistan and killed two elderly nuns who had been living there, the church's senior priest and police said.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) -- A fire on Monday destroyed a Russian Orthodox church in northern Tajikistan and killed two elderly nuns who had been living there, the church's senior priest and police said.

The fire in the Maria Magdalena church in the town of Khujand broke out in the early morning and destroyed the wooden building dating back from the 1930s, the regional police said.

Police said the fire most likely had been caused by a short circuit, but the probe was still ongoing.

The two killed nuns were Maria, 78, and Yelikonida, 72, said the church's senior priest, Father Pyotr.

Maria Magdalena's was the only Russian Orthodox church in Khujand.

The ex-Soviet Central Asian nation has about 100,000 Russians _ a number that has dwindled from about 1 million before the 1991 Soviet collapse. Scores of Russians have left, fleeing economic hardship and the country's civil war in the mid-1990s.