Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko believes the deaths of nine people in an explosion and fire at the slot machine arcade in Dnipropetrovsk were caused by violations of fire safety regulations.

She said this in Dnipropetrovsk while opening a meeting of a government commission to investigate the incident.

"I think that everybody knows about the tragedy. However, I would like to say that people could not escape because there was only one entrance and one exit... So it is clear that had the fire safety been regarded the casualties would not be so high," she said.

Tymoshenko said that she personally inspected the accident site and that safety regulations had been ignored there.

She stressed that under Ukrainian legislation, one slot machine should be placed in an area of no less than six square meters. The number of slot machines installed there was a direct violation of these regulations. A power circuit overload could have caused the fire, the premier said.

As reported, nine people were killed and eleven injured when an explosion ripped through a Metro Jack Pot slot machine parlour on the ground floor of a five-story building in Dnipropetrovsk early on Thursday.