MOSCOW (AP) -- A pre-dawn fire swept though a rundown Russian dormitory for quarantined foreign students Monday, trapping many behind permanently locked exits and causing some to leap from the five-story building.
Thirty-six students died and nearly 200 were injured, some from frostbite after fleeing half naked into the bitter cold. The students - from Asia, Africa and Latin America - had just arrived in Moscow and were being held in the dorm awaiting medical checks before starting classes.
``It was like a horrible nightmare,'' Abdallah Bong, a student from Chad. ``We saw them crying for help and jumping out of the windows, and we could do nothing to save them.''
Bong and other witnesses said dozens of fire engines were slow to reach the blaze, jammed into a narrow access road blocked by parked cars.
``Students had to do it all themselves, holding mattresses for those who were jumping out,'' said Nafafe Tengna, a journalism student from Guinea.
The fire, believed to have been caused by an electrical malfunction, engulfed the building at People's Friendship University. It burned for more than three hours, though Moscow fire safety department spokesman Yevgeny Bobylyov insisted that firefighters arrived on time and did their job well.
Flames gutted most of the dorm above the ground floor. Smoke poured from windows as a wet snow fell in the early morning darkness. The fire left the building's concrete walls streaked with black soot, and nearby trees were caked with ice that had formed from water used to extinguish the blaze.
Once a showpiece of Soviet patronage of the Third World, receiving generous state subsidies, the university declined with the 1991 fall of communism. Still, it continued to draw students from impoverished nations with its low tuition, such as medical school costs of $1,200 a year.
Students said the dead and injured included citizens of China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Tahiti, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Angola, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Kazakhstan, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Peru and Malaysia.
``A man from Ecuador shattered himself and died when he jumped out of the fifth floor,'' said Adam Rosales, a 22-year-old Peruvian student, gazing in shock at the blackened shell of the building.
Lubov Zhomova of the Moscow Health Directorate said 36 people died and 197 others were injured - 57 of them in serious or grave condition.
A preliminary investigation pointed to an electrical problem, Deputy Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told President Vladimir Putin, who inquired about the fire during a Cabinet session. Some bystanders said the fire could have been started by electric heaters, which students use to get warm.
The university was founded in 1960 and named Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in honor of the postcolonial Congo's first prime minister; its name was changed in 1992. Its aim was to offer a strict Marxist curriculum to students from developing nations.
A 22-year-old student from Mauritius, who identified himself only by his first name, Vashish, described the school's accommodations as ``miserable.'' He and other students said one of the dormitory's two stairways was permanently locked, making an emergency exit more difficult.
With stipends shrinking to almost nothing, many foreign students trade goods to make money, and already cramped dormitories are often packed with bags and bundles.
Russia has a high rate of fire deaths, 18,000 a year. That is nearly five times the number of fire deaths in the United States, which has twice the population. The contrast is even starker with the United Kingdom, where there are 600 fire deaths a year, or one per 100,000 people - compared to 12.5 per 100,000 in Russia.
Experts say fire fatalities have skyrocketed since the end of the Soviet Union, in part because of lower public vigilance and a disregard for safety standards. The age of Russia's buildings also plays a role: Many older buildings have wood partitions between the floors that help fires spread rapidly.
