At least one person was killed and hundreds of people were left homeless when a major fire swept through a village just east of Russia's Urals mountains.
Video footage showed flames raging across the horizon, engulfing houses and trees, while smoke blocked out the sky in Sosva, about 1,400 km (870 miles) east of Moscow.
Videos showed dozens of traditional Russian log houses burning to the ground, and what appeared to be train wagons of lumber burning.
Authorities did not say what caused the fire, but investigators opened criminal cases for negligence and causing death by negligence.
Hundreds of firefighters battled through the night to counter the flames which swept across dry ground, fanned by a strong wind, emergency workers said. Hundreds of people lost their homes, according to Russian media.
"Here everything is just burned down - there are no houses anymore - everything is burning," said one unidentified man as he drove through the remains of one part of a village.
Sverdlovsk region's emergency ministry said firefighters had saved more than 1,200 residential buildings in the settlements of Tayozhny and Sosva from the fire. Russian emergency services said that more than 380 personnel were involved into containing the fire.
(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Mark Trevelyan)
