Two people have been killed and nine injured in an explosion which ripped through a 12-storey apartment building in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, Interfax news agency reported early on Wednesday.
A local prosecutor said initial signs were that the blast was caused by an explosive device, the news agency reported.
Interfax, quoting its own correspondent in the city, said emergency workers had sealed off access to the building. It did not say what had caused the blast or give its exact time.
"The first to the fourth floors of a 12-storey building have been destroyed," it quoted the regional deputy director of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Nikolai Shustov, as saying.
Ambulances and fire engines had rushed to the scene of the blast in a suburb of Sochi, Interfax added. The resort is a popular holiday destination for Russians.
"We can say in preliminary terms that the explosion was caused by an unidentified explosive device," Interfax quoted Valery Khan, an investigator with the local prosecutor's office, as saying.
"According to unconfirmed information, it could not have been a gas explosion because the building was not connected to the gas," he said.
Sochi has been chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, a decision the Kremlin has portrayed as an international vote of confidence in Russia.
The city is close to Russia's turbulent North Caucasus region, scene of long-running insurgencies against Moscow's rule. It is also close to Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia which fought a separatist war in the 1990s.

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