The governor of Russia’s Kemerovo region resigns over a mall fire that killed more than 60 people after a litany of violations in safety procedures left shoppers and children trapped inside the building.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the scene of a fire in a shopping mall that killed at least 64 people, and hit out at "criminal negligence" which he says was to blame for the high death toll.

A total of 64 people some of them children perished in a fire that ravaged a busy shopping mall in an industrial city in Siberia, as rescue teams struggle through piles of charred rubble to recover bodies.