Shells continue to go off in Ukraine

The Ukrainian army ammunition storage near the Novobogdanovka settlement, the Melitopol district of the Zaporozhye region (southern Ukraine), is continuing to burn. Once in every two-three minutes, 100-millimetre anti-tank shells explode there.

According to the press service of the Ukrainian defence ministry, now the section of the depot where these ammunitions are stored is ablaze. The maximal reach of a shell fired from a cannon is about eight kilometres.

In the past few hours, the number of explosions has decreased due to the heavy rain. However, rescuers and the military still have no access to the hotbed of fire and cannot extinguish it to prevent other ammunitions from exploding.

According to the source, the fire has not yet approached the sites where more powerful reactive shells are stored for reactive systems of salvo launching - Grad, Uragan and Smerch - having the reach of up to 40 km.

According to a spokesman of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry, it can change if the situation in the accident zone changes. In particular, if the wind changes, the fire may switch on the sections with other ammunition.

According to the press service, there are about 90,000 tons of shells for all types of artillery weapons for the land troops of the Ukrainian armed forces in Novobogdanovka.

Five people have already been killed by the accident.