Feature

Russia 2018 World Cup stadium worker dies

A North Korean man has died while working on a stadium for football’s 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia.

State news agency RIA Novosti quoted regional investigative official Sergei Kapitonov as saying that the unnamed individual died in a communal area used by workers at the Krestovsky Stadium in St Petersburg.

“According to preliminary information, the death was the result of heart disease,” Kapitonov said.

Ekaterina Giginyak, a spokeswoman for the Metrostroy company, which is overseeing construction work at the stadium, said that the worker died of heart failure, but added that he had passed away in his lodgings rather than at the construction site.

Three workers have died while working on the stadium within the last year. Last month a man died after falling down a lift shaft.

The 68,000-seat stadium is reportedly costing about $690m (£550m/€621m). It will become the new home of Russian club Zenit St Petersburg and will host games during next year’s Confederations Cup World Cup warm-up event, as well as a World Cup semi-final the following year.

Earlier this month Fifa, football’s global governing body, expressed its concerns about an “unstable” retractable pitch at the stadium.

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