Russia ? Nine patients of a clinic for the mentally ill in Siberia died in a fire Sunday, a day after a blaze at a Moscow drug treatment center killed 45, officials said.

The accidents underlined widespread neglect for fire safety rules in Russia, which records about 18,000 fire deaths a year – several times the rate in the United States.

The fire in the psychiatric hospital in the town of Taiga in central Siberia, about 2,200 miles east of Moscow, began shortly after midnight.

About 200 other patients escaped unhurt and 15 were hospitalized, said Valery Korchagin, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry.

Russian television stations showed the hospital’s two-story building engulfed by fire and a line of half-dressed patients walking through a blizzard. A rescue worker carried one patient, clad in pajamas, who was unable to walk.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, Korchagin said. Local prosecutors were looking at arson as a possible cause, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.