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Families of ship fire victims in Kaliningrad to receive $43,000

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MOSCOW, June 8 (RIA Novosti) - The families of the 10 people that died in a fire on a cargo ship at a military dockyard in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad will receive over $43,000 each in compensation, a navy spokesman said on Sunday.

The Yenisey container ship was undergoing repairs when an explosion occurred and a fire broke out at around 3:00 p.m. Moscow time (11:00 GMT) on June 5. The preliminary death toll of 10 has yet to be officially confirmed.

Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said: "Each family of the victims of the fire on the Yenisey civilian vessel will be paid more than a million rubles."

June 8 has been declared a day of mourning in the Kaliningrad Region.

Dygalo said a Navy commission along with investigators from the emergencies ministry are currently working at the site to establish the cause of the fire.

Navy Commander Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky said earlier the accident was caused by severe violations of safety procedures during repair work on the vessel.

A source in the dockyard's administration told RIA Novosti on Sunday that the blast could have been caused by the use of a gas-burner to heat up bolts on the roof of a fuel tank.

The ship was docked at a Defense Ministry facility in Baltiysk, a closed military town near Kaliningrad.

Dygalo earlier said the renovation work on the vessel was being carried out by the ship's owner, a private company from St. Petersburg, and that the Defense Ministry had merely leased the dock to the company.

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