Explosions spark fire at Ukraine arms depot
ZAUDAIKA: More than 12,000 people were evacuated after ammunition stored at an arms depot in northern Ukraine began exploding yesterday and set off a huge fire, authorities said. Security services said they were investigating “possible sabotage” in the incident at a defense ministry depot near the village of Druzhba, around 135 kilometers northeast of Kiev.
Emergency services said they had no information on any deaths, and regional authorities said more than 60 people required medical help for smoke inhalation. Grey and white smoke rose up from the horizon yesterday morning, an AFP photographer saw, while explosions were going off every one to two minutes. A defense ministry official said the fire was raging in five storage areas, covering about 10 percent of the total of about 700 hectares.
The fire and explosions began around 3:30am local time at the Number Six depot,
the emergency services said. Four explosions went off in different parts of the depot before a fire broke out, the deputy head of Ukraine’s General Staff, Rodion Tymoshenko, said, suggesting this meant the incident could be “sabotage,” a thinly veiled jab at Russia. Kiev forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country since 2014 in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people. More than 12,000 people were evacuated from the area at risk, the emergency services said.
‘Possible sabotage’ President Petro Poroshenko called a meeting of the heads of security forces and promised to give residents all the necessary help, his spokesman wrote on Facebook. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman travelled to the scene and chaired a meeting of emergency services officials. “The main thing is to preserve people’s lives. Whatever’s destroyed, we will rebuild,” he wrote on Facebook. Authorities closed the airspace in a 30-kilometre radius around the site, as well as rail and road traffic. More than a hundred firefighters worked at the scene, while the defense ministry sent in a firefighting tank.
The defense ministry said the intensity of the explosions had lessened in the morning and that the current explosions were from rifle ammunition, not shells. Tymoshenko denied a claim by the emergencies service that the depot contained 88,000 tons of ammunition, while saying the real total was a secret. —AFP