High-rise blaze in Moscow

Helicopters dumped water to put out the blaze between the 65th and 67th floors of Moscow's Federation Tower. Firefighters trudged up stairs because elevators are not yet in service on the construction site. Fourteen people were evacuated without injury, according to Russian news agencies.

The fiery night-time spectacle, watched by Moscow residents, reportedly began when a construction spotlight lamp set fire to plastic sheeting. The twin towers are being erected west of the Kremlin.

A second blaze on Moscow's southern outskirts killed 17 migrant workers who were using a shed as a hostel fitted out with bunk beds, next to a market, according to a spokesman for Moscow's fire department.

Victims could be from Tajikistan

Unconfirmed reports suggested that the workers might have been from Tajikistan, a country in economic tatters which has a tenth of its population - especially its younger people - living abroad.

The news agency Interfax quoted investigators as saying an electric space heater left on in the improvised hostel overnight to ward off frigid spring weather may have been the cause of the blaze.

Numerous Moscow markets employ cheap laborers - often without official permits and under squalid conditions, say officials.

Three stories engulfed

Russian news agencies said the skyscraper blaze - three kilometers from the Kremlin - engulfed 300 square meters of floorspace over three stories.

Moscow's Federation Tower, actually a complex that will comprise two glass-sheathed office towers and a mast, will reach skyward 506 meters. That would make it Europe's tallest, topping another Moscow high-rise, the City of Capitals building at 302 meters.

In 2000, Moscow's Ostankino broadcasting tower, once the world's tallest freestanding structure, burned for 26 hours.

Construction resumed at the Federation Tower site in August last year, having come to a halt in 2008 due to financial difficulties.

ipj/msh (dpa,AP, AFP)