The International Red Cross has been delivering emergency supplies of food and clothing to people in a Siberian town who are without proper heating in temperatures of minus fifty degrees centigrade.

Six thousand people -- almost half the population of the town of Zakamensk near the Mongolian border -- are affected by the failure of a centralised heating system and are said to have been sleeping beside electric ovens, or are burning fittings from buildings to keep warm.

Russian media reports say a state of emergency has been declared elsewhere in Siberia where a further twenty-five thousand people are without fuel. The BBC Moscow correspondent says Russia's economic problems are at the root of the shortages.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service