The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
On Tuesday, Kemerovo residents packed the main square in a rare protest, some holding placards and shouted slogans calling for the sacking of Tuleyev and Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment Wednesday on the regional authorities’ actions, saying that “Putin has said that it is hardly appropriate to issue hasty judgements”.
While Putin was at the scene in Kemerovo, he did not come onto the square to meet the protesters, but talked to a group of locals separately.
“Will you tell us how many children died?!” Russia’s response to horrific shopping mall blaze at Kemerovo is prompting more questions than answers… https://t.co/MfJDy9Pi9i pic.twitter.com/pcT3jKVi3j
— Stephanie Hancock (@hancock_steph) March 28, 2018
– Teacher tried to save others –
In the Kemerovo region, relatives held the first funerals for victims as regional emergencies minister Alexander Mamontov said 27 bodies have been identified.
Several hundred people attended the funeral of 57-year-old Nadezhda Agarkova and her two grandchildren Konstantin, 8, and Maria, 10, who died in one of the mall’s cinemas.
“These are our children, our pupils,” the children’s teacher Svetlana Sazheva told NTV television outside the church, saying the children who died were “top students and well brought up.”
Dozens of pupils of Tatiana Darsaliya, an English teacher who died, attended a memorial service in a city cathedral, RIA Novosti reported. She had saved her daughter from the burning cinema but died after going back in to save others, pupils said.
Television broadcasts carried a black ribbon on the screen or a message “Kemerovo — we mourn.”
The front pages of some newspapers were published only in black and white, while Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid covered its front and back pages with photos of the victims.
Investigators have said the most likely cause of the fire, which broke out on the top floor of the mall, was an electrical fault.
The authorities have opened criminal probes into causing death through negligence, breaches of fire safety and providing unsafe services.
A court on Wednesday ruled that the head of the company that managed the shopping centre and a security guard who failed to trigger the public warning system must remain in custody till May 25.
