A fire broke out early Monday in an apartment building in eastern Moscow, killing seven, including two men who jumped to their deaths from a sixth-floor balcony trying to escape the blaze.

The fire in the nine-story building at 3 Sayanskaya Ulitsa, near the Moscow Ring Road, started at 3:10 a.m., a fire department spokesman said.

The two men jumped before firefighters arrived and died at the scene from injuries sustained in the fall, city prosecutor's office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.

She said the two had probably been in the apartment where the fire started and investigators suspect that the careless handling of a cigarette during a late-night party may have sparked the blaze.

"There are signs that people were up all night drinking and celebrating in the apartment -- a very nice apartment," Petrenko said.

NTV reported that the man living in the apartment where the fire started had likely fallen asleep with a lit cigarette.

A neighbor told NTV that until recently the man was the head of a local fire precinct, though neither the city fire department nor the city prosecutor's office could confirm this.

"He was a good man," the woman said. "He was a fire chief. Then he started drinking, didn't work and smoked."

After extinguishing the blaze at about 4 a.m., firefighters found the charred remains of a child in the hallway of the apartment. The identity and age of the child had not been established late Monday.

Two women and a young boy died of apparent smoke inhalation in a two-room apartment on the eighth floor, officials said. Interfax said the boy had been born in 1992.

The seventh victim, a man, was found dead in a two-room apartment on the seventh floor. A woman and young girl living in the same apartment were hospitalized for smoke inhalation and burns in their upper respiratory tracts, Interfax reported.

Three other people in the building were hospitalized, Petrenko said.

Source: Agencies