Belarus mental hospital fire kills 30 patients

A FIRE believed to have been set by a psychiatric patient engulfed a Belarusian mental hospital, killing 30 patients and reducing much of the century-old wooden building to ash.

One of the 62 patients who lived at the hospital in the village of Randilovshchina, some 150 miles west of the capital, Minsk, was missing.

Emergency officials said yesterday they did not know whether he ran away or died in the blaze.