Thousands evacuated as Russian arms depot on fire

Twenty-eight thousand people have been evacuated and dozens injured by a massive fire in a Russian arms depot where tonnes of artillery shells and rockets are stored. It is the third such incident in two months.

Reuters//RU24 via Reuters TV

Nineteen people were hospitalised and another 23 injured as firefighters used massive trucks and jets to put out the blaze, which resulted in balls of fire exploding over a nearby village.

The inferno, near the city of Izhevsk in the Volga region of Udmurtia, forced the evacuation of people by buses to nearby villages at a radius of 30 to 60 kilometres, officials said.

Two people died of heart attacks during the incident but no fatalities could be attributed directly to the fire or the explosions themselves, news reports said.

The force of the blast broke windows in a nearby village and the fire burnt down a two-storey building where the personnel lived, the defence ministry said.

More than 100 firefighters were battling the blaze, along with water-bombing planes and robotic equipment, officials said.

Explosions have rocked Russia's massive Soviet-era military storage facilities three times since 4 April , when four people were killed when a 40-kilogramme case of explosives went off.

Late last month, a similar fire at a munitions depot in another central Russian region triggered explosions that lasted several days but caused no deaths.

Analysts explain the frequent arms depot fires to deficient safety measures and a general state of disrepair in the country's underfunded military.

But some also suspect foul play. Corruption in the military is rife and such fires can help hide the illicit sale of munitions on the black market.

The silo reportedly stored some 100,000 tonnes of shells and other military, including parts of Grad rocket systems.

"The rockets did not explode. They are in a concrete shelter up to 70 centimetres (28 inches) thick," Deputy Defence Minister Dmitry Bulgakov said after inspecting the area from a helicopter.