A fire that killed nine people at a Russian nursing home early Monday apparently started when an elderly resident doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire, investigators said.

Daria Korovina, a spokeswoman for the regional Emergencies Ministry, said two other people were injured in the fire at the facility in Vishny Volochek in the Tver region, about 200 kilometres north of Moscow. Some 480 people were evacuated, she said.

The prosecutor-general's Investigative Committee, Russia's top investigative body, said preliminary inspection showed that an 86-year-old resident of the facility committed suicide by self-immolation, starting a blaze that killed eight people in neighbouring rooms from smoke and gas inhalation.

The state news agency ITAR-Tass reported the man was believed to be upset about being unable to obtain an apartment of his own, which he had sought under a program providing housing for Second World War veterans.

Also Monday, a fire of uncertain cause broke out in a wooden building that is part of a halfway-house complex for the mentally ill in the Ulyanovsk region, 500 kilometres southeast of Moscow, but there were no injuries, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia suffers frequent fires at hospitals, schools and other state-run facilities. Many have been blamed on negligence and violations of fire safety rules. They have served as grim reminders of crumbling infrastructure in Russia.

However, the head of the Emergencies Ministry's supervision department, Yuri Deshevykh, was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying the nursing home's fire alarm system, installed this year, had functioned properly. The Investigative Committee said the seven-storey brick building was constructed in 1988.

Russia records nearly 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per capita rate in the United States and other Western countries.