Five killed by boiling water after pipe bursts at Russian hotel

A heating pipe burst Monday in a small Russian hotel, flooding rooms with boiling water that killed five people and left six others injured in the central city of Perm, emergency officials said.

The nine-room hotel was in the basement of a residential building in the city of 1 million people near Russia's Ural Mountains. All of the victims — who included a child — were staying at the hotel, authorities said. Three of the injured were hospitalized with burns.

Russian police have opened an inquiry into the tragedy.

The plumbing explosion left 20 buildings, including a hospital, a school and a kindergarten, without heat or hot water in the middle of winter, local authorities said.