A Russian ammunition depot in Crimea has been rocked by a series of explosions that caused a huge fireball eruption.
Two people were injured and 2,000 people from a village have been evacuated as the blaze broke out on Tuesday morning.
The site is located in Mayskoye, a village in the north of Crimea – a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia-appointed regional head Sergei Aksyonov, who visited the site, said: “One man has a shrapnel wound, and one was crushed by a wall. Their lives are not in danger, fortunately.”
No “serious” casualties have been reported so far, according to the Russian state news agency RIA.
“As a result of the fire, the stored ammunition detonated,” it said, without specifying what caused the blaze.
Moscow also said another fire had started at a transformer substation near the town of Dzhankoi, 14 miles from Mayskoye.
Later, Russian state-owned news agency TASS cited the defence ministry as saying that civilian infrastructure, including the substation, had been damaged as a result of “sabotage”. Ukraine has yet to confirm or deny responsibility.
