Floors collapse in deadly hospital explosion

AFP - Gas canisters exploded in a Ukrainian hospital on Monday causing the collapse of several floors of the building that killed seven people and left 17 missing, officials said.

"Four more bodies have been recovered, the number of dead has now reached seven", a Lugansk local authority press spokesman said, updating earlier reports.

The blast left a gaping hole in the wall of the hospital in the eastern city of Lugansk, 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of Kiev. Rescuers heard voices coming from the rubble.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko blamed lax safety rules for the explosion of oxygen bottles in the intensive care unit of Lugansk's hospital number seven.

"Several floors of the hospital collapsed," said a statement released by Tymoshenko's office.

Tymoshenko, who is in the midst of a heated presidential election battle, arrived on the scene during the day.

The emergency situations ministry said in a statement that 261 patients and 350 medical staff were in the hospital at the time of the explosion, and that people from undamaged parts of the building had been evacuated.

"The fate of 17 people remains unknown," Olexander Efremov, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, told reporters at the scene after attending an emergency meeting on the rescue efforts.

"One can hear voices under the rubble, so the search is continuing," Efremov said, adding that the survivors could be trapped in a room on the first floor.

Search dogs were waiting for the site to be partly cleared before they could start work, an AFP journalist witnessed.

Local Internet newspaper Vostochny Variant said the third and fourth floors of the building had collapsed onto the second.

Lax adherence to safety rules makes such disasters relatively frequent in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.

In December 2008, 27 people were killed after an oxygen canister explosion partially destroyed an apartment block in the Ukrainian Black Sea town of Yevpatoria.