Blast kills at least nine on Russian island of Sakhalin

At least nine people including children were killed in a gas blast that rocked a five-storey apartment building in the settlement of Tymovskoye on Russia’s Far Eastern Sakhalin Island (Valery Limarenko/Telegram/AP)

A gas blast in an apartment building has killed at least nine people, including four children, on the island of Sakhalin in far eastern Russia, local authorities said.

A section of the five-storey building in the town of Tymovskoye collapsed after a gas cylinder exploded in one of the apartments at around 5.30am Moscow time on Saturday, they said.