Death toll in Russian apartment block blast rises to 37

The explosion tore through the 10-storey building in the industrial city nearly 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) east of Russia’s Moscow in the early hours of Monday.

The number of confirmed dead from a New Year’s Eve gas explosion that caused a Russian apartment block to partially collapse has risen to 37, officials said Thursday, with four people still missing.

Russian Emergencies Ministry members work at the site of a partially collapsed apartment block in Magnitogorsk, Russia January 1, 2019. (Reuters Photo)

Six children were among the dead, the emergency situations ministry said in a statement, while six people had been rescued from the rubble of the building in the Ural mountains city of Magnitogorsk.

The explosion tore through the 10-storey building in the industrial city nearly 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) east of Moscow in the early hours of Monday.

Officials had given a toll of 28 dead as of late Wednesday.

Rescuers have been braving freezing temperatures to search through mangled concrete and metal but no survivors have been found since Tuesday, when a baby boy was pulled from the rubble.

The Soviet-era apartment block was home to about 1,100 people and the explosion left dozens homeless over the New Year -- the biggest holiday of the year in Russia.