Moscow market fire kills 12 migrant workers

Twelve people died Tuesday when a night time fire tore through a two-story Moscow market warehouse that was being used by migrant workers from a former Soviet republic as a temporary residence.

“Twelve people died. They were migrant workers. We are trying to confirm which (ex-Soviet) republic they came from,” a Moscow emergencies ministry spokesman told AFP.

Unconfirmed news reports said the migrants came from the impoverished Central Asian nation of Tajikistan. Numerous Moscow markets employ cheap labourers from the region without giving them proper housing conditions or pay.

The blaze erupted early Tuesday at a market on the southern outskirts of the city called Kachalovsky. Officials said it took two hours to put out.

Emergency workers described squalid living conditions in which the workers slept on hard cots that were stacked on top of each other in rows of four without any direct access to the outside.

The workers “lived in a metal annex that was equipped with a space heater”, an unnamed law enforcement official told the Interfax news agency.

“They slept in frighteningly tight conditions, on hard bunk cots that were then stacked on top of each other,” he said.

Another official said the workers probably left the space heater on all night to stay warm during the frigid Moscow spring. Overnight temperatures plunged below freezing and much of central Russia has been hit by snow.

“The fire could have started from the electric space heater. It was probable left on all night because the structure was turned into living quarters,” an unnamed investigator told ITAR-TASS.

Police said they have opened a criminal investigation but have not yet pressed any charges against the market owners.

Russia’s migration service estimates that there are 700,000 Tajiks living officially in the country — a tenth of their home country’s population of just under seven million.

Tajikistan was wrecked by a brutal civil war in the early 1990s and then experienced nearly two decades of ethnic tensions and endemic drugs trafficking that hampered sustainable growth.

Its economy remains in tatters and some analysts estimate that up to half of Tajikistan’s young male population is currently trying to make a living in Moscow and other major Russian cities.

The predominant majority of the migrants who arrive in Moscow do so without acquiring the official city worker permits that the Russian capital has required since Soviet times.

Their employment is therefore never officially reported to the authorities and many end up living in Moscow apartment block basements or makeshift residences.

Seven migrants were killed in January 2009 when a fire swept through an underground Moscow garage they were building and had also used as a temporary living shelter.

Another seven died in May 2011 when a fire engulfed an old abandoned building in central Moscow.

The presence of Central Asian nationals and workers from the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region has also stirred racial tensions in the Russian capital and resulted in repeated deadly attacks.

President-elect Vladimir Putin had vowed to reinforce migration controls while serving as prime minister for the past four years and won a strong following from Russian nationalists while heading the Kremlin in 2000-2008.