Death toll in Russian fires rises to 50

WILDFIRES were raging close to a shelter housing hundreds of dogs and retired circus animals, animal activists said yesterday, as the death toll from weeks of blazes across Russia rose to 50.

Rescuers pulled a body out from a provincial village gutted by wildfires and another person died of their injuries overnight, the Emergencies Ministry said. Almost 600 separate fires were still raging, mostly in western Russia, as the country endured its hottest summer on record.

The director of the animal shelter, in the village of Khoteichi, 64km east of Moscow, said he and volunteers had already extinguished a fire that came within 150 metres and were bracing for more blazes.