Some 15,000 people being evacuated from area near Kharkiv region military depot

09:45, 23.03.2017 1 min read

Explosions with varying degrees of intensity were recorded on the premises of a military warehouse in Balaklia in Ukraine's Kharkiv region as of 7:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, the press service of the Ukrainian State Service for Emergency Situations said.

Around 15,000 people are being evacuated from the possible danger area. Passenger traffic via the Balaklia railway station has been suspended and has now been arranged using a reserve route.

Ukrainian Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios, for his part, said on Facebook that these depots stored 138,000 tonnes of ammunition and were located on an overall area of 368 hectares.

"Given the possibility that the ammunition detonation areas may increase and it [ammunition] may scatter, an evacuation of the local population has been organized from the populated localities of Verbivka and Yakovenkove," he said.