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.
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