Military Dorm Collapses In Siberia

A three-story dormitory collapsed Thursday at a military school in the Siberian city of Tomsk, killing 11 cadets and injuring dozens of others.

Forty-three people were hospitalized, 10 in serious condition, said Karl Smolikov, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow. One of the dead was a cadet who was trapped under the debris for hours before rescuers reached him late Thursday.

The collapse occurred minutes before the daily 6 a.m. wakeup call.

The building, which housed 120 cadets, was built before the 1917 Russian Revolution and had not undergone repairs since the mid-1950s.

“The barrack looked as though it would stand for centuries … but practically the whole of the building collapsed,” Raisa Alexeyeva, press secretary of the Tomsk mayor’s office, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.