With freezing temperatures outside, many casualties had jumped from windows to escape the blaze in the crowded five-storey building housing students from the developing world at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University.

An official at the Bangladesh Embassy in Moscow told The Daily Star last night only seven Bangladeshi students were injured in the incident, four of them critically. The rest were either released after first aid or kept at the hospital for further treatment.

"The critically injured have been kept under observation at the intensive care units," the official said.

He added that Sumon Pal, who was badly burnt, was to be taken to Klifasoskey Institute, a specialised burn hospital in the Russian capital. The other three critically injured students are Shishir Rozario, Sheikh Hasan Masud and Mazharul Islam.

"Twelve Bangladeshi students used to live in the building that caught fire. Five of them escaped injury. The injured students got hurt trying to jump out of the window from the second floor of the building. Some suffered burn injuries while some others broke their legs in the process".

The official said the Bangladesh envoy in Moscow and other officials rushed to the hospitals where the students were being treated as soon as the news of the fire reached them.

"People were jumping from the windows because it started on the second floor and there was no other way out. It was absolutely horrible," Richard Mallobe, a sociology student from Liberia, told Reuters.

"It happened very fast. Some people jumped and were burned so we tried to get them into ambulances."

Students said the concrete building -- a typical example of buildings hastily thrown up across the Soviet Union in the 1960s -- had housed newly arrived students awaiting medical checks, and was notorious for being filthy and overcrowded.

Among the casualties were students from China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and a number of African countries, the trade union of foreign students told Interfax news agency.

The semi-official China News Service said 17 Chinese students were missing and 33 others injured in the fire. Chinese embassy officials were not immediately available for comment.

"Twenty-eight people died inside the building, three bodies were discovered outside and one person died later," a city police spokesman told Reuters.

He could not confirm their nationalities.

He said 139 people had been treated for injuries and a total of 272 people, including students from China, Vietnam, Ecuador, Tahiti, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Angola were registered as living in the block.

FILTHY, OVERCROWDED

The university, founded in 1960, was named after Congo's first president after the African nation gained independence from Belgium. It was designed to provide subsidized Socialist education to students from the developing world.

Vashish, 22, a medical student from Mauritius, said one of its two staircases was blocked.

"There were only supposed to be two people in each room, but there were always three," he said. "There were absolutely filthy communal bathrooms and people used to try to move out and get into a new building as soon as they could."

Silvio Fernandez, 24, a language student from Cape Verde, said the blaze began at about 2 a.m. in two rooms on the second floor and spread to the rest of the building.

"I could see people in the windows of the fifth floor leaning out and shouting," he said.

"I've never seen anything like this."

NTV television showed fire crews working through heavy snow to control the blaze, which gutted the top three floors of the building. They had extinguished the fire by about 5:30 a.m., the police spokesman said.

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov told NTV that investigators suspected the fire was caused by an electrical fault.

"It is difficult to talk about the cause," he said. "According to preliminary information, which we have now investigated, the cause was domestic. Most likely, there was a short circuit in room 203."

However, Russian agencies reported a criminal investigation had been opened and authorities were not ruling out arson.