Eight killed in Ukraine explosion

Rescue teams are working in the rubble of an apartment building in southern Ukraine, where an explosion has killed at least eight people.

Local officials in Yevpatoria, in Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, say as many as 30 other people may have been buried under the debris.

Two entrances to the five-storey building were blocked by falling concrete following the explosion.

The cause of the blast is thought to have been a gas leak.

A spokesman for Ukraine's emergency ministry said 19 people had been rescued, with four of them being treated in hospital.

Correspondents say casualties caused by gas explosions in often crumbling apartment buildings are common occurrences in former Soviet states, particularly in the winter, when residents use more heating.

One such blast in October 2007 killed 23 residents in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk.