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Kemerovo residents want to lay out grove instead of burnt shopping mall

According to latest reports, the catastrophic inferno claimed the lives of 64 people, including 41 children

KEMEROVO, March 29. /TASS/. People living in Russia’s Siberian Kemerovo region are coming up with an initiative to lay out a grove instead of the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) shopping and entertainment center that has been burnt down by a disastrous fire claiming 64 human lives, speaker of the regional legislature Alexei Sinitsyn said on Thursday.

"Proposals [on a memorial at the center’s site - TASS] are coming to our website. The most popular of them is to lay out a grove. But the final say will be up to the families [of the fire victims]," he said at a session of the legislature.

On Wednesday, Kemerovo region deputy governor Vladimir Chernov told journalists that the regional authorities supported the initiative of the fire victims’ relatives to set up a memorial on the site of the burnt building.

A fire broke out on the top floor of the Zimnyaya Vishnya (or Winter Cherry), a four-story shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo on March 25, eventually engulfing an area of 1,500 square meters. According to latest reports, the catastrophic inferno claimed the lives of 64 people, including 41 children. Seventy-six people, including 27 children, were hurt.

According to President Vladimir Putin’s decree, Russia observed a day of national mourning on March 28. Flags were flying at half mast, and all entertainment events were cancelled across the country.