Special
equipment, including two fire tanks and three fire vehicles, are used at the
depot now.
KIEV, March
25. /TASS/. Detonations continue at the ammo depot in Ukraine's Kharkov region,
where the fire was extinguished, press service of the national emergencies
service said on Saturday.
"As of
07:25 on Saturday, occasional explosions of various intensity continue at the
technical territory of the depot," the press service said.
Special
equipment, including two fire tanks and three fire vehicles, are used at the
depot now, the press service said, adding gas supplies had been cut, and
railway communication at the local station was stopped. The air communication
is closed in the area of 40 km.
The
now-infamous fire broke out at the military depot in near the city of Balakleya
at around 3.00 a.m. local time (0100GMT) on Thursday. Chief Military Prosecutor
Anatoly Matios said the fire and a series of blasts were recorded in several
storage facilities for artillery shells and missiles.
Until
recently, the ammo depot in Balakleya, encompassing an area of 368 hectares,
was considered to be Europe’s largest facility for storing weapons. The depot
may house up to 150,000 tonnes of armaments. Media reports say currently there
are some 125,000 tonnes of munitions there.
Earlier,
Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladimir Groisman said that the blaze had engulfed
nearly half of the entire territory of the military facility and extinguishing
it "may take up to seven days."
Ukraine’s
top military brass labeled the blasts at the ammo depot an ‘act of sabotage.’
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Lugansk people’s militias said that Kiev’s
military may have blown up the depot to cover up the mass shortage of munitions
there.
Source: ITAR-TASS 25-03-2017
