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Fire destroys shopping mall in Almaty

Xinhua, April 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

A fire that occurred on Sunday night has burnt down almost an entire shopping mall in downtown Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.

Almaty firefighters were stopped by high temperatures as well as heavy and toxic smoke. Firefighting equipment inside the Adem mall failed to work, while fire hydrants had no water for fire engines.

Almaty's emergency situations department had dispatched hundreds of firefighters to the scene, but strong wind and explosions inside the mall made the mission very difficult.

The fire was finally put out at 11:50 a.m. (0550 GMT) on Monday, leaving an area of 25,000 square meters burnt.

At present, authorities are still looking into the cause of the fire. Endi