MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti) – Two fires in the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday night killed four and injured one person, the Emergencies Ministry reported on Sunday.

Two persons died and one was injured after a fire broke out in a three-room apartment on the sixth floor of a nine-storey residential building in Yuzhnoye Chertanovo in southern Moscow.

In a separate incident, two people were killed in a blaze that started in a garage in the Kosino-Ukhtomsky district in eastern Moscow. The fire caused the garage roof to collapse.

The causes of the fires are being investigated.

Negligence, careless smoking and reluctance to comply with fire safety rules are the most frequent causes of residential building fires across Russia. The number of house fires has risen dramatically in the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some 12,000 people died in fires across the country in 2011, according to Emergencies Ministry figures. The United States, with a population over twice as large, saw around five times fewer fire-related fatalities.

Fire safety came into the spotlight in Russia in recent years after a number of high-profile blazes. Over 150 people were killed in a fire at a nightclub in the Urals in December 2009.