MOSCOW: A total of 64 people some of them children perished in a fire that ravaged a busy shopping mall in an industrial city in Siberia, as rescue teams Monday struggled through piles of charred rubble to recover bodies.

Russian television showed images of thick black smoke pouring out of the Winter Cherry shopping center in the city of Kemerovo, which also houses a sauna, a bowling alley and a multiplex cinema and was packed with people on Sunday afternoon.