YEREVAN -- The director of a market where an apparent fireworks warehouse explosion killed at least 16 people in the Armenian capital has denied any breach of fire-safety regulations ahead of the tragedy.
But fire inspectors said that two dozen violations identified last year at the sprawling Surmalu market had not been eliminated by the market's administration before the August 14 incident.
Sixteen bodies have been recovered so far and three people are still missing, with 61 more people injured in the massive fire triggered by the blast, about 2 kilometers from downtown Yerevan.
Emergency Situations Minister Armen Pambukhchian said an Iranian and a Russian are among those still unaccounted for as rescue crews continue to search the site.
Razmik Zakharian, the 86-year-old businessman and former politician who owns Surmalu, was not immediately reachable.
Irina Madatova, the manager of Surmalu, told RFE/RL's Armenian Service by phone that the operators had addressed the violations. She did not elaborate.
Fire inspectors said they had given Surmalu until the end of 2021 to comply with city-planning norms and fire-safety rules. They said no subsequent inspection had been carried out.
Vardan Tadevosian, a spokesman for Armenia's Investigative Committee, said that about two dozen people, most of them survivors of the fire, have been questioned so far.
Surmalu's managers and owners have not been interrogated, he said, and no charges have been filed against any individuals.
Tadevosian said authorities were still trying to clarify the identities of tenants and vendors.
Investigators together with experts are also examining the scene of the explosion and fire, he said but added that with rescue work still continuing it would likely take time to establish a cause.
Pambukhchian told reporters a day earlier that authorities had "practically ruled out" terrorism as a cause, based in part on footage showing smoke before a small fire and then an explosion.
"Watching the footage of the explosion, we almost rule out such a theory [that a bomb had been planted], because first there was smoke, then fire covering some small area, then came an explosion," he said. "Quite a large amount of explosive materials was stored there."