Explosions ripped through a military depot in southeastern Ukraine for a second day yesterday, sending flames leaping dozens of meters into the air and showering surrounding villages with shells and shrapnel. Emergency officials said the disaster had claimed five lives.
Firefighters and other emergency workers were unable to extinguish the fires that broke out Thursday afternoon at the sprawling arsenal near the city of Melitopol, some 600km southeast of the capital Kiev.
"Such fires cannot be extinguished," Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevgeny Marchuk was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He said special technology was needed, and that Russia's Defense Ministry was sending experts to the region yesterday to help.
Officials have not said what triggered the explosions. Marchuk said only that preliminary information pointed to human error, and said military prosecutors were investigating.
About 10,000 residents of 15 villages around the arsenal were evacuated on Thursday. Many pupils were whisked away directly from their schools, leaving their parents desperate for news of their children, Russia's Channel One television reported.
Shaking and soaked by rain, his tear-filled eyes ringed with dark circles, Oleksandr Tretyak said he had not seen his children.
"I don't know where they are," he told Channel One. "I left with my brother. They left, but I don't know where they are."
Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry said five people had died as a result of the explosions, Interfax reported. At least three of the deaths were due to aggravation of existing heart problems, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev.
The arsenal, known as Ammunition Depot 275, contains Uragan, Smerch and Grad missiles, ITAR-Tass said. Interfax quoted Marchuk as saying that Ukraine had inherited 184 such arsenals from the Soviet Union.
Marchuk said that the arsenal contained more than twice as many armaments as its official capacity, Interfax reported. The explosion sent some rockets flying as far as 6km, he said.
Schools were closed in the city of Melitopol, the largest settlement in the region, after authorities declared a state of emergency and urged people to stay indoors. A key railway line linking Moscow and the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea was cut off.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday called the blast an "unfortunate accident" and said the government would do its best to "avoid grave consequences." Top officials were dispatched to the scene.
President Leonid Kuchma ordered the Prosecutor General's Office and the nation's security service to establish a special commission to investigate. Deputy Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Holovin also ordered a probe into the explosion on suspicion of "irresponsible handling of explosive substances."
Severe accidents at arsenals in the former Soviet Union are not uncommon. A 2002 fire at a naval arsenal on the edge of Vladivostok, the home of Russia's Pacific Fleet, sent shells flying as far as a half-mile and another series of blasts at a Far East naval arsenal a year later injured 13 people.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS