Protest outside hospital after up to 57 pupils poisoned

Angry citizens of a Russian city led a spontaneous protest outside a hospital after multiple schoolchildren allegedly fell ill because of a landfill site.

The shows hundreds of people from the city of Volokolamsk, around 120km west of Moscow, milling around the hospital in the city where the ill children are staying.

Four pupils from one school in the city were taken ill supposedly from toxic fumes from the nearby Yadrovo landfill, reportedly bringing the total number to 57.

The author of the , lawyer Denis Kunaev, said residents had been complaining about the issue for more than a year.

It is believed a gas, hydrogen sulphide, is causing the illness among residents of the town of roughly 23,000.

The governor of the Moscow capital region, Andrei Vorobiev, said the schoolchildren will be moved away from Volokolamsk.

The Yadrovo landfill, opened in 2008, is a major dumping ground for rubbish from Russia's capital.

But residents say gasses from the site have been causing nausea, vomiting and fainting.