The fire broke out early Sunday in the facility with 13 residents in the village of Tikhon in the Kostroma region, some 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Moscow.

A statement from the regional government said the search was continuing for the two missing, and that the remaining nine residents had been taken to a hospital for treatment.

There was no immediate determination of the cause, but Russian news agencies reported that suspicion was focused on smoking.

Russia records nearly 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per-capita rate in Western countries. The country suffers frequent fires at hospitals, schools and other state-run facilities, many blamed on negligence and fire safety violations.