Rescuers combed through rubble in search of survivors on Wednesday after an explosion ripped through a Moscow apartment block killing at least eight people and burying others, emergencies officials said. Officials said Tuesday night's blast was probably caused by a gas leak, dismissing early suspicions it may have been a bomb. Some residents said they had smelled gun powder and not gas after the explosion.

"According to preliminary information, there was a fire with a gas explosion in flat 28 on the second floor," Moscow Prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov told NTV commercial television.

"It was not a canister of gas, but gas which people use to cook food on a gas stove," he said.

Igor Babayevsky, the deputy head of Moscow's emergencies department, told Russian television the way the front of the building collapsed pointed to weak construction and a high concentration of gas.

Officials at Russia's Emergencies Ministry said at least eight bodies, including two children, had been pulled from the debris. Eight people were taken to hospital after the blast ripped through the five-story block of flats. A dozen people could still be buried under the rubble, they added.

"According to the information we have now, there could be 12 people under the collapsed building," Russia's Emergencies Minister, Sergei Shoigu, told Interfax news agency from the scene on Wednesday, adding that a final list of residents had not yet been established.

Russian President Valdimir Putin had dispatched Shoigu and the director of the FSB domestic security service, Nikolai Patrushev, to the site on hearing of the disaster.

Russian news agencies said rescue workers were now expected to wrap up their salvage operation in a couple of hours.

PHOTO CAPTION

Rescue workers clear debris in the building hit by a blast in northeastern Moscow, August 21, 2002. An explosion ripped through a Moscow apartment block killing at least six people burying scores of others. (Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)