As fires at the ammunition depot in town of Balakliya, Kharkiv Oblast, rage on, the body of a 66-year-old woman has been found by emergency workers in the ruins of her house.
The house was destroyed by a shell hurled from the depot by the massive explosions that have wracked the base, some 465 kilometers east of Kyiv, since fire broke out there in the early hours of March 23.
The head of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, Mykola Chechetkin, reported the woman’s death – the first recorded in the incident – to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, on March 24.
According to Chechetkin, another woman, a 55-year-old, suffered a head injury due to being hit by a shell fragment.
As of the morning of March 24, firefighters had managed to put out 15 fires at the ammunition depot, Chechetkin said, adding that up to 12 houses had been destroyed due to the explosions at the depot.
At least 600 security personnel, including 300 police officers and 300 National Guardsmen, are continuing to patrol in the town and surrounding villages, from which at least 20,000 civilians have been evacuated to safe locations.
Sixteen police checkpoints have been set up to coordinate the civilian evacuation and block entry to the town. According to the Ministry of Defense, 100 military servicemen are also guarding the area.
Chechetkin said 2,450 people had been evacuated with the help of the local authorities and emergency services, while over 17,000 left the town by themselves. Servicemen also evacuated 70 disabled persons and 760 elderly people, as well as 130 patients from a local hospital.
Some 3,700 of the evacuees have been found accommodation at schools, summer camps and recreation centers. They are being given regular meals and water, Chechetkin said.
The local authorities have inspected 120 residential building to search for people who might be in need of help, he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has issued an order inviting NATO specialists to help in clearing unexploded ordnance, the head of state’s official Twitter account says.
In the early hours of March 24, aerial surveillance of the affected area was carried out to identify hot spots of the fire, and armed forces engineering units have been deployed, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said.
“Now they have started mine clearing on the territory near the ammo stores, and are getting ready to clear the weapons depots,” an official ministry statement reads.
Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, said on March 24 that the authorities still suspect that the fires and explosions at the ammunition depot were caused by an act of sabotage.
Previously, the military authorities claimed that the fires might have been started by bombs dropped from a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle, and said that guards had claimed to have heard the sound of a drone before the first fires and explosions started.
Another theory, according to the authorities, is that the incident was caused by negligence.
