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Thirty mental patients were killed when fire broke out in the Kozlovichi Mental Asylum in Randilovshchina, in the Grodno region of Belarus, on October 12, 2003.
Although President Alexander Lukashenko's spokeswoman, Natalya Petkevich, said that a patient (among those who died in the fire), described as a pyromaniac who had twice previously tried to set fire to the 1905 wooden building, was responsible for the blaze, government investigators were also looking into staff carelessness as a possible cause. Staff members, some of whom had been sleeping in a separate building on the campus, apparently tried to put the fire out and rescue patients themselves, waiting to call the fire department.
Many have criticized the conditions in Belarussian psychiatric hospitals.
References:
- "30 Killed in Belarus Mental Hospital Fire" (AP News Story from Yahoo)
- "30 psychiatric patients killed in fire in Belarus," XINHUA online
