Ammo dump in Russian military base on fire

May 18, 2012 20:30

Russian emergency workers evacuated about 1,800 people from their homes on Friday after a fire broke out at a military base in the country's far east, sparking an explosion of stored shells.

Russian Railways, the company that manages the country's vast rail network, said it had closed down a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway because of the incident and was expecting train delays.

Residents of two villages close to the base where Soviet-era shells were stored have been evacuated, and another two villages are being cleared, a spokeswoman for the far eastern branch of the emergency ministry said.

The blaze triggered a chain of blasts that left two soldiers slightly injured, the ministry said, with rescue workers unable to put out the flames as artillery shells continued to explode three hours later.

The defence ministry said there were about 489 train wagons containing 100-millimetre shells at the base.

The base lies seven kilometres from a train station in the nearest village of Sungach, close to the Chinese border and about 200 kilometres north of the port city of Vladivostok.

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