Three Chinese students have been confirmed dead in the fire that occurred early Monday morning at a Moscow university and left 36 foreign students dead and more than 170 injured.

Nearly 50 injured Chinese students are in local hospitals, and six are still missing, according to the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University's China office in Beijing.

Although some are severely injured, all the Chinese students in hospital are well cared for and none are in a life threatening condition, Xinhua News Agency quoted Liu Guchang, Chinese ambassador to Russia, as saying yesterday.

The parents of children studying at the university are worried. Wu Xiaolei, a staff member of the university's office in Beijing, said that from the time news of the fire was released, he and his colleague Liu Jiang had been kept busy answering telephone calls from concerned parents.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said yesterday that the Chinese ambassador and other Chinese diplomats in Russia have visited the injured students in hospitals.

For those whose dormitories were damaged in the fire, the embassy and local agencies have helped provide food and temporary accommodation, he said.

In addition, an emergency phone number was opened at the embassy to handle calls from students' relatives back in China.

The accident would not influence China's policy on sending students to study in Russia, said the spokesman.

The Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has urged Russia to pay close attention to the accident, investigate the cause behind it and issue free visas for the relatives of the victims, Liu said.

The fire broke out at about 2:50 am Moscow time on Monday in a dormitory of the university and was extinguished at 05:39 am.

The Xinhua report said the initial conclusion is that the fire was caused by incorrect use of an electric appliance.

The reason why the casualties in the fire were so high was that the alarm was not sounded soon enough, Xinhua quoted a worker with the Russia fire fighting bureau as saying.

Some experts estimated that the alarm was sounded 30 minutes after the fire broke out, and, when the first team of firemen arrived, many rooms on the second and third floors of the building were already ablaze.

(China Daily November 26, 2003)