AKIPRESS.COM - Rescuers are searching for survivors in the central Russian city of Magnitogorsk, where an explosion devastated a block of flats, killing at least four people, BBC reports.
Officials in the city, in the Urals region, say a gas leak caused the blast. About 40 people are missing.
President Vladimir Putin has arrived in the city to assess the situation.
The building was home to 120 people, and 48 flats collapsed in the blast.
"I woke up and felt myself falling," one witness told Russia television, according to news agency AFP. "The walls were gone. My mother was screaming and my son had been buried."
Another witness spoke of a "wave of fire" which followed the blast.