Fifteen people were killed and another six missing after an illegally built dam collapsed at an artisanal gold mine in a remote Siberian settlement on Saturday, in the latest deadly accident to hit Russia. The dam on the Seiba River in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk burst and flooded several cabins where workers lived, authorities said.

Icy and muddy floodwaters hit the cabins in a mining camp located near the village of Shchetinkino early Saturday morning as the workers were resting. A rescue-and-search mission will last through the night, said Alyona Aleksishina, spokeswoman for the regional branch of the emergencies ministry. "It will continue despite everything," she told AFP. Six people were still missing, she said. Officials said the dam had been built in breach of safety rules and claimed that the authorities were not aware of its existence. President Vladimir Putin ordered officials to provide assistance to the victims and identify the reasons for the accident, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019