Picture shown is for illustrative purposes only.

A fire broke out in a retirement home in the Moscow region, killing at least nine people with several more in intensive care in hospital, local authorities said Monday.

The fire in the privately-owned care home in the town of Krasnogorsk started around midnight on Sunday to Monday and was extinguished within an hour, emergencies services said.

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"Nine people died on site and nine more were rushed to hospital in serious condition and are treated in intensive care," the Krasnogorsk municipal government said in a statement.

Russian agencies said 37 people were in the building at the time of the fire.

Kommersant newspaper said many of the care home residents were not mobile and the employees were unable to carry them out from the smoke despite the fire being small.

The fire is the second such incident around Moscow in just over a month: investigators are probing another fire in an upscale retirement home in Moscow, which caused the deaths of six people in April.

Agence France-Presse