Twenty-three people died in a fire that destroyed a wooden old people's home in northwest Russia, and preliminary evidence indicated the blaze began in the smoking room, officials said yesterday.

Fire gutted the single-storey log building in the village of Podyelsk, about 1,000 kilometres northeast of Moscow, on Saturday evening, the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement on its website, www.mchs.gov.ru. Ministry photographs showed flames engulfing a dozen windows along the side of the log building in the Komi republic.

Firefighters tackled the blaze amid thick smoke and temperatures as low as -35°C.

Video footage showed scarred human remains lying amid blackened beams, some covered in icicles.

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