A still taken from NTV television shows fire brigades fighting a fire at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University

MOSCOW, November 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Thirty-six foreign students died when a fire tore through a university hostel in Moscow Monday and another ten were in extremely critical condition, the Interfax news agency cited health officials as saying.

Raising the earlier toll of 33, sources in the Moscow city health department said that another three victims had died later in hospital, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

In total, more than 180 foreign students were hospitalized after the blaze engulfed a hostel of Moscow's Peoples' Friendship University, in the southwest of the capital, at 2:30 am (2330 GMT).

Forty-seven students were in critical condition and another ten in an extremely critical state, the officials said.

Many of those injured suffered broken limbs after jumping out of the five-storey building to escape the raging inferno, and others suffered burns and were poisoned by carbon monoxide.

Casualties included nationals from Bangladesh, China, Vietnam and several African countries.

The blaze which broke out at 2:30 am (2330 GMT) was only extinguished some three hours later.

Russian television showed a roaring red blaze and dense black smoke rising up from the hostel as 40 teams of firefighters struggled to douse the flames under a violent snowstorm.

A criminal inquiry was launched and investigations were still going on to determine the causes of the fire, which could have been started deliberately, officials said initially.

The two main leads followed by investigators were "intentional arson or mishandling of electric appliances," Russian Education Minister Vladimir Filippov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The Peoples' Friendship University, formerly known as Patrice Lumumba University, was set up in Soviet times to train students from Third World countries who would then spread Soviet and Communist influence. It is still attended mostly by young people from developing countries.

As dawn broke, all that was left of the student accommodation, where more than 270 people had been at the time of the fire, was a blackened ruin with shattered windows.

"We found 28 bodies inside the building, another three were in front of the hotel and one more person died in an ambulance," Moscow police spokesman Kirill Mazurin told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Seventeen of the fire victims were Chinese, RIA Novosti quoted a Chinese news agency as saying, citing diplomatic sources in Moscow.

Three young women from Congo, almost hysterical from anxiety, were among a crowd of students waiting outside the hostel for news of missing friends as firemen searched inside the charred interior for more bodies.

"We haven't heard anything from our friend, who is 19 years old, Mavungu Princilia Ines," said one of them, who refused to give her name. Four Congolese were in hospital, the young woman said.

Asked about the reasons for the fire, another one said: "In any case, we'll never know the truth."

The education minister said the university administration was looking for three African students, who lived on the first floor where the fire started before spreading over to the entire building. They were seen running away shortly before.

An economic student from Peru, Adam Rosales, 22, who was living on the second floor and managed to escape, said that the first firefighters took 20 minutes to arrive and the biggest fire engines an hour and a half after the blaze erupted.