Rockets fly as arsenal blazes out of control

Ammunition explosions ripped through a military depot in southeastern Ukraine for a second day today, sending flames leaping dozens of feet into the air and showering surrounding villages with shells and shrapnel.

One guard died yesterday after sustaining grave injuries, said Defence Ministry spokesman Kostiantyn Khivrenko.

About 10,000 residents of 15 villages around the arsenal were evacuated yesterday. Many pupils were whisked away directly from their schools, leaving their parents desperate for news of their children, Russia’s Channel One television reported.

The deaths of four other people in the region might be connected with the disaster, said Oleh Venzhyk, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

About 2,000 firefighters and other emergency workers using 230 vehicles gathered at the scene, Venzhyk said. But they were unable to extinguish the fires that broke out yesterday afternoon at the sprawling arsenal near the city of Melitopol, 370 miles southeast of the capital Kiev.

“Such fires cannot be extinguished,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Yevgeny Marchuk was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He said special technology was needed, and that Russia’s Defence Ministry was sending experts to the region today to help.

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 three miles, he said.

There were as many as three explosions every minute today.

Officials have not said what triggered the explosions at the depot, which Khivrenko said housed tens of thousands of tons of munitions including some slated for destruction.

Marchuk said only that preliminary information pointed to human error, and said military prosecutors were investigating. Anything from a smouldering cigarette butt to improper placement of the munitions might have been the cause, Khivrenko 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.