Twenty-one people have been killed in a fire at a psychiatric hospital in southern Russia, according to the country’s emergencies ministry.

“Nineteen bodies were found at the site of the fire, two other people succumbed to their wounds at the hospital,” a spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

The wooden hospital building was destroyed by the fire and a further 20 people were injured, the spokesman said.

The fire broke out at the hospital in the village of Alferovka, in the region of Voronezh in the south of the country.

It is not immediately clear what triggered the blaze.

The fireis the latest tragedy to hit a psychiatric institution in Russia, where outdated Soviet-era infrastructure is still in widespread use and managers often take a lax approach to fire safety.

Scores of people also die in house fires each year.

A fire at a psychiatric hospital in north-west Russia in September 2013 left 37 people dead while another blaze in April of the same year killed 38 people.

In 2009 156 people were killed in a nightclub fire in the city of Perm, which lies about 1,126km (700 miles) east of Moscow, in one of the deadliest accidents in Russia’s modern history.