KIEV: At least five people were killed on Monday when oxygen canisters exploded in the intensive care unit of a Ukrainian hospital and caused several floors to collapse, officials said. “As a result of a violation of security rules in the intensive care unit of hospital number seven of Lugansk, oxygen canisters exploded,” it said in a statement. “Several floors of the hospital collapsed,” it said. Ukraine’s emergency situations ministry said that as a result of rescue efforts “three people have been saved and the corpses of five people have been extracted”. The health ministry said in a statement that 261 patients and 350 medical personnel were in the hospital at the time of the blast. It said seven people had so far been rescued from the rubble.

8 killed in Indonesian Landslide, A landslide has killed at least eight people in Indonesia, officials said on Monday.

Five people are still listed as missing after the landslide hit a village in Palopo district, South Sulawesi province on Sunday, health ministry crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya said.

Nine people were injured. A rescue team from provincial capital Makassar is on the way to the area.

“The affected area is near the top of the mountain and there’s a lot of rain there. The landslide was caused by a flash flood triggered by rain,” he said.

MAKKAH: Heavy rains have failed to dampen the spirits of millions of pilgrims as they readied themselves today on the plains of Arafat where they will pray to the Almighty for His mercy and blessings.

Arafat is the second day of Haj and one of the highpoints of the holy pilgrimage. When dawn breaks, pilgrims will stand on the place where Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) delivered his last sermon 14 centuries ago.

Yesterday pilgrims circumambulated the Ka’ba and then traveled to Mina for the Day of Tarwiyah, where they rested in accordance with the Sunnah of the Prophet.

Saudi authorities have warned pilgrims to move carefully amid Wednesday’s storms, the first in years to occur during the Haj.

Water seeped into tents in the sprawling tent city in Mina where pilgrims were staying.

“We are staying in tents for now. Heavy rain turned red-carpeted corridors into streams of water with empty cans of soft drinks floating,” Zohra Nasef, from Morocco and on her second Haj, told Reuters.

“Some pilgrims could not find enough space in tents so we deployed additional ones to shelter them,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Al-Turki.

The pilgrims, however, have continued with their Haj rituals and no evacuation was reported. A power outage hit parts of Makkah, SPA said.

Khaled Merghalani, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said the threat of heavy rain in Makkah could result in health risks for pilgrims, but was confident the authorities could handle any crisis.

“We have planned for this possibility,” he said. Plans to counter natural calamities such as heavy rains and floods have been well laid out, said Khaled Al-Habshi from the Red Crescent.

The security and safety of pilgrims has been a major concern for the authorities this year, with certain groups calling to politicize the Haj, the conflict with the infiltrators on the Saudi-Yemeni border, and the threat of swine flu. Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Al-Turki said Tuesday the government would not allow surprise attacks on pilgrims.

Four pilgrims have already died from the A(H1N1) virus here, the authorities said. On Tuesday the Health Ministry said all hospitals and medical centers in Makkah and the holy sites were prepared to receive flu cases.

“There is no risk of the illness spreading as we are well-prepared and have taken the necessary measures to prevent an outbreak,” Merghalani told a news conference.

Shahul Ebrahim, a consultant from the Atlanta, Georgia-based CDC at the Haj, said it was too early to tell if the rains could exacerbate the spread of H1N1, the flu virus. “Rain can lead to other waterborne diseases … such as the common cold, flu. But we still don’t know how it will affect H1N1. We can’t predict,” he told The Associated Press.

So far, the rain has mainly caused traffic snarls. Winter is the rainy season in Makkah, and light showers are not uncommon, but such a heavy downpour has not been seen for years during the Haj.

Civil Defense spokesman Maj. Abdullah Al-Harthi said his organization has plans to deal with flooding, including 300 buses to evacuate pilgrims if necessary. He said no casualties have been reported from the rains, SPA reported.

One lane of the main road into Makkah was closed by flooding, said Amer Al-Amer, an Interior Ministry official. “It cannot handle the pressure of all the people coming from outside Makkah,” he said, adding that it would cause delays of several hours for people trying to reach the sites.

Water covered the floors in many of the tents, said Suleiman Hamad, a 29-year-old pilgrim in Mina. He said the scene was “muddy, but manageable,” with many pilgrims throwing blankets over their heads when they walked outside. Rain fell sporadically throughout the day, and stopped by late afternoon in many sites – though it continued to fall in Makkah.

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Health Ministry confirmed on Sunday the country’s first H1N1 influenza death.

“A young woman who was already ill and living in poor circumstances died of swine flu,” Deputy Health Minister Amar al-Khuzaie said.

The H1N1 flu outbreak, declared a pandemic in June, has spread around the world and could eventually affect 2 billion people, according to World Health Organisation estimates.

The virus has killed more than 800 people worldwide since emerging in April.

New Delhi: India may come out with a vaccine for the dreaded influenza A(H1N1) infection by September, health ministry officials said on Tuesday. The health ministry is working with the Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Panacea Biotech to develop the vaccine for swine flu, they said. “Two of these companies have told us that they will be able to provide the vaccine by September while the third one hasn’t given any time frame yet,” Director General of Health Services (DGHS) R.K. Srivastava told reporters here.

He said the companies were not given any deadline for developing vaccine.

The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the Indian Virology Institute have already isolated the swine flu virus and started work on developing the vaccine.

India on Monday reported first swine flu death in Pune as a 14-year-old girl succumbed to it. As many as 558 swine cases have been reported in the country and of these, 470 patients have been discharged after treatment.