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Some 12,000 people were evacuated after a fire and a series of explosions at a weapons depot containing thousands of tons of ammunition in northern Ukraine on Tuesday morning, authorities said.
The emergency services said they had no information about deaths or injuries during the incident that occurred near the city of Ichnya, more than 170 kilometers away. of Kiev.
The fire and explosions began at approximately 3:30 am at Ministry of Defense Depot No. 6, which covers approximately 700 hectares, emergency services said in a statement. The size of the affected area was not known.
Emergency services said in a statement that "there are about 88,000 tons of ammunition in the stores".
The video posted on the Emergency Services website showed smoke rising to deafening noises.
Nearly 12,000 people were evacuated from the area at risk, including residents of 38 villages, regional authorities said, while gas and electricity were cut off to prevent accidents.
President Petro Poroshenko convened a meeting of heads of security forces and promised to provide all the necessary help to residents, said his spokesman on Facebook.
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman went on the scene and chaired a meeting of emergency services managers.
The authorities closed the airspace within a radius of 30 kilometers around the site, as well as rail and road traffic, while more than a hundred firefighters were working on the scene.
Military prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible negligence on the part of those responsible, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reported.
Stale ammunition stocks dating from the Soviet era often cause fires and explosions in Ukraine and Russia.
It was the sixth major fire in three years in a weapons depot of the Ukrainian army, which had been fighting since 2014 against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, in a conflict that killed more than 10,000 people.
In March 2017, a huge fire unleashed explosions in a city depot in Balakliya, in the eastern part of Ukraine controlled by Kiev, making one dead and five wounded.
The Ukrainian authorities blamed the incident on an "act of sabotage".
Ukrainian tanks pass through Kiev during a military parade in August to celebrate Independence Day
