The parents of three sisters have described receiving desperate phone calls from their trapped daughters just minutes before they died in a locked cinema as flames engulfed a Russian shopping centre.

On Monday, a litany of fire safety violations were blamed for the death toll in the fire in the industrial Siberian city of Kemerovo reaching as high as 64.

Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system was switched off by a security guard shortly after the fire broke out.

Authorities launched a criminal investigation into the fire.

Four people were arrested and questioned by police on Monday, including the head of the company responsible for servicing the fire alarm system and the technical director of the company that owned the shopping centre.

“Our children burned while we just watched,” said Olga Lillyevyali, who rushed to the shopping centre as the fire was underway, Russian news website Meduza reported.

Her three daughters, twins aged 11 and their five-year-old sister, had been dropped off at the cinema by their father, Alexander Lillyevyali, to see children’s film Sherlock Gnomes earlier that afternoon.