So many Ukrainian firefighters are feared dead after an explosion through a fuel depot outside Kiev, sparking a huge fire that covered buildings close by.
The force of the explosion produced set alight fire trucks that had rushed to the scene. A fireman wearing a silver heat-resistant suit and mask was running away from the scene of the disaster and alerting everyone remaining at the scene to leave immediately.
The interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said the initial explosion hit a fuel depot near the village of Vasylkiv, 20 miles (32km) south-west of Kiev. Avakov tweeted that Firemen had died. His later Twitter updates said several firemen initially assumed to have died had been pulled out alive from the flames.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s emergencies ministry told AFP it was aware of six people being injured. Kiev has been suffering from a dry hot spell for more than a week. Police said the fire, which began in one fuel tank and spread to others, was likely to have been started by a technical fault but the cause was not yet fully clear. The fuel depot hit by the initial explosion is owned by a Ukrainian company called BRSM-Nafta, which operates a chain of filling stations.
A nearby filling station firm called KLO said it was also evacuating its staff from the scene. “The danger is real,” the company’s co-owner, Vyacheslav Steshenko, told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Source: The Guardian
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