Kyiv says it has sent in specialized tanks and aircraft to fight a massive fire as explosions continued at an arms depot in northern Ukraine on October 10.
More than 12,000 people were evacuated after ammunition stored at the depot near the town of Ichnia, some 180 kilometers east of Kyiv, began exploding early on October 9, sparking a huge blaze.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said earlier that it was looking into all possible leads, including sabotage, at the depot about 135 kilometers northeast of Kyiv.
The Armed Forces General Staff announced on October 10 that the guarding of all military depots across the country had been beefed up.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said at a Cabinet meeting on October 10 that he has “no doubt” that the explosions near Ichnia “were attacks on our depots.”
According to Mr. Poltorak, the depot contained about 70,000 tons of ammunition over 680 hectares, an estimated 43,000 tons of which were “ready to use.”
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on October 10 that two engineering vehicles, four firefighting military tanks, and two planes are involved in extinguishing the fire.
Regional authorities said 63 people came to hospitals, saying they felt ill after inhaling smoke, but a Defense Ministry statement said no civilians or military personnel were injured or killed.
A deputy chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, Maj. Gen. Rodion Tymoshenko, said he suspects sabotage, though he did not point to a possible culprit.
“There were two simultaneous explosions first, and they were followed by two other explosions on the other side of the depot. The explosions caused the fire,” Maj. Gen. Tymoshenko told reporters in Kyiv. “The intensity of the explosions in different parts of the depot indicate that it was most likely a sabotage,” he added.
The fire and explosions began at around 3:30 a.m. local time on October 9 at the Defense Ministry’s depot No. 6, which covers about 700 hectares, a statement said.
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and the head of the country’s armed forces, Viktor Muzhenko, traveled to the site. Gen. Muzhenko said that “appropriate restrictive measures” were being introduced across the Chernihiv region.
There have been several explosions and fires at Ukrainian arms depots in recent years, amid fighting between government forces and the Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a few hundred kilometers southeast of the depot site.
In March 2017, a massive deflagration at a munitions depot near the eastern city of Kharkiv prompted the evacuation of about 20,000 residents living within a 20-kilometer radius of the site.
And in September 2017, more than 30,000 people were evacuated after artillery warehouses on a military installation exploded in the Vinnytsia region, southwest of Kyiv.
Authorities have frequently blamed the blasts on sabotage, and the government has allocated 100 million hrv ($3.6 million U.S.) for the protection of the country’s ammunition storage facilities.
With reporting by UNIAN, obozrevatel.ua and AFP.
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