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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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| Information | | |
Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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27Sep17
Ukraine says sabotage likely behind military warehouse blasts
An act of sabotage was likely behind the explosions that ripped through a major military warehouse in Ukraine's central Vinnytsya region, a Ukrainian military spokesman said on Wednesday.
In a statement on Facebook, Ukrainian army spokesman Sergiy Misyura said preliminary data showed that the arm storage depot was attacked by an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The subversive action was plotted and carried out by a group of people, the spokesman said, without giving further details.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who arrived in Vinnytsya city, said "external factors" could have been a cause of the blasts.
The explosions started at the open storage yard of the Ukrainian army's military facility near the town of Kalynivka on late Tuesday and continued into Wednesday.
According to local media, the warehouse near Kalynivka, which lies some 250 km southwest of the capital Kiev, housed about 188,000 tons of army ammunition.
The Ukrainian authorities have not commented on the amount of arms stored at the warehouse, but said about 30 percent of them has been either destroyed or damaged by the blasts as of midday Wednesday.
According to the State Service for Emergencies, two people were injured in the blasts, while 30,000 others have been evacuated from the surrounding areas.
The explosions were a third similar incident in Ukraine this year. The other two blasts happened in March and earlier in September separately, also in ammunition depots in the Donetsk and Kharkov regions.
[Source: Xinhua, Kiev, 27Sep17]
Donate
Radio Nizkor
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