17 die in fire at makeshift home for elderly

Seventeen people died when a makeshift home for elderly people outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev caught fire in the early hours of Sunday.

The fire tore through the two-story shelter for the elderly which is in the village of Litochky, located some 50 kilometers north of Kiev.

"The bodies of 17 people have been found at the site of the fire," the head of Ukraine's state emergencies service, Mykola Chechotkin, said in comments released by his office.

"The fire broke out at a privately-owned house," he told reporters, saying the shelter for the elderly had been set up in violation of existing laws.

Citing preliminary information, the service said that 35 people were at the home when the fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday.

Eighteen people have been rescued and five of them have been hospitalized, said the service, adding that the fire had been extinguished by Sunday morning.

More than 150 people helped put out the fire.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze but according to one version it might have been sparked by an exploding TV set.

National television channels, reporting from the scene, said that the street where the shelter was located was now cordoned off by police.

Pictures released by the state emergencies service showed a fire-gutted white brick building, with rescue teams scouting its remains.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been notified of the blaze, the government said in a statement, adding that Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman had tasked officials with creating a special commission to look into the fire.

Groysman expressed condolences to the families of those who had perished in the "terrible tragedy", the government said in a statement.

First deputy head of national police, Vadym Troyan, said in televised remarks that a man who had organized the temporary shelter had already been detained.

In post-Soviet countries like Ukraine outdated infrastructure is still in widespread use and managers often take a lax approach to fire safety.

Such fires often claim the lives of some of the most vulnerable people including the elderly and those with mental illness.

Scores of people also die in house fires each year.