A huge crater 20 meters in diameter and two injured. It is the balance of an error of a Russian Army fighter that yesterday, when flying over the Russian city of Belgorod, lost ammunition, causing an explosion that left at least two women injured in this town near Ukraine.
On Thursday night, local authorities reported a massive explosion in Belgorod that left a huge crater in the center of the city and injured two women.
It is not the first time that the Russian army has accidentally hit its own territory. In October 2022, an Su-34 plane crashed into a residential building in the southern city of Yeysk, also on the border with Ukraine, killing 16 people, including seven children.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, said the detonation triggered a shock wave that damaged four apartments and four cars and knocked down power poles.
“There was an explosion,” Gladkov said in a message on the Telegram app. Investigation teams and representatives from the Emergencies Ministry were working at the scene, he added.
The explosion left a “huge” crater about 20 meters in diameter in the center of the city, he explained. Both Gladkov and Mayor Valentin Demidov posted photos of the damage on social media.
In one, dazed neighbors are huddled in front of an apartment building, with a woman holding a small dog and a fire truck nearby. Another photograph shows the interior of the apartments destroyed by the explosion.
Local authorities did not detail the cause of the incident, but the Defense Ministry quickly issued a statement explaining that a fighter jet lost ammunition while flying over the city.
“During a flight of the air force Su-34 plane over the city of Belgorod, an abnormal drop of ammunition occurred,” the ministry said.
The statement published by Russian news agencies specified that the incident took place at 22:15 local time (19:15 GMT).
Citing preliminary information, Gladkov said one woman was hospitalized with a head injury and another was treated at the scene. Demidov noted that the residents in the buildings affected by the explosion will be relocated to hotels.
Traffic in the area has been temporarily halted, it added. Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, is often hit by shots, sometimes fatal, which Moscow attributes to Ukraine, but the center of Belgorod has only been hit a few times.
In January, Governor Gladkov told President Vladimir Putin that 25 people have been killed and more than 90 wounded in the region since the start of the offensive.
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