A fire ripping through a market warehouse on Moscow's outskirts on Tuesday killed 15 foreigners from former Soviet republics, Russian media and emergency officials said.

Most of the victims were from Tajikistan and the others may have come from other Central Asian states, state media said, after a pre-dawn blaze that highlighted the dangerous conditions many labour migrants endure in Russia.

The migrants appeared to have been living in makeshift quarters in the rear of the two-storey building used as a metal storage warehouse at a construction materials market.

"The space was not meant for people to live in," state-run news agency RIA quoted Sergei Gorbunov, deputy chief of the Emergency Situations department in Moscow's southwestern district, as saying.

It was the deadliest fire in Moscow since a blaze at a hospital for drug addicts in December 2006 killed 46 patients, Interfax reported.