Death rate doubles in Moscow's heat crisis

By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Scorching heat and acrid smoke have nearly doubled death rates in Moscow, a city official said on Monday, as smog from raging forest and peat fires shrouded Russia's capital for a third week.

Firefighters battled wildfires covering 1,740 square km (672 sq miles) -- an area bigger than Greater London -- in what the chief state weather forecaster said he believed to be Russia's worst heat wave for a millennium.

"The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360 and 380 people per day. Today, we are around 700," Andrei Seltsovsky, Moscow's health department chief, told a city government meeting.

Russia's worst drought in decades has spooked world grain markets, driving wheat prices up at the fastest rate in more than 30 years and raising the specter of a food crisis.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned on Monday that the harvest could be as low as 60 million tons, lower than many analysts had expected.

Kremlin critics have blamed Putin, Russia's paramount leader, for what they call a sluggish and ineffective government response to the fires, but opinion polls have so far shown no decline in his popularity.

MORGUES OVERCROWDED

Moscow's health chief Seltsovsky broke weeks of official silence on the wider health effects of the smoke and heat, saying that ambulance dispatches were up by about a quarter to 10,000 a day.