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At least 137 people injured in Moscow storm — source

Eleven people were killed

MOSCOW, May 29./TASS/. At least 137 people have been injured in a severe thunderstorm hitting Moscow on Monday afternoon, a source from Moscow’s emergency services has told TASS.

"As of the moment, 137 injured people have sought medical assistance. The figure is not final," a source said.

Eleven people were killed in the storm.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin called the Monday’s storm unprecedented in the scope of damage in the recent years. Updated reports said about 3,500 trees had been toppled by the storm. As of 8 pm, Moscow time, more than 35,000 workers from municipal services were dealing with the aftermath of the severe thunderstorm, assisted by more than 4,500 units of hardware. Repair teams saw up fallen trees to remove them. Work began immediately after the storm ended.

Meanwhile, municipal transport traffic has been fully restored in Moscow City, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told TASS.

"We’ve taken measures to ensure normal functioning of municipal transport and traffic on the city streets has been fully restored," he said. "This also concerns Line 4 (Filyovskaya) of Moscow metro and the MCC (Moscow Central Circle metropolitan rail line)."

Filyovskaya is mostly located on the ground and the MCC is a fully overland line.

Moscow went through a harsh hurricane on Monday, with gusts of gale-force wind at 28 meters per second and a torrential-like shower. The aftermaths of the hurricane were so startling that the Office of Moscow Prosecutor, the Department of Natural Resource Utilization and the Department of Housing/ Public Utilities opened an inquiry into the damage the calamity had brought.

In the meantime, a storm warning is still in effect in Moscow at around midnight. Elsewhere in Russia’s Central Federal District, emergency repairs teams were eliminating the aftermaths of the hurricane, which had affected more than 4,000 people in over 20 populated localities and felled more than 1,000 trees.