Blasts Rock Russian Ammo Depot in Siberia, Five Injured: TASS

Picture taken on March 2005 displays boxes of ammunition stored in a open-air Russian ammunition depot. (Vadim Denisov/AFP/FILE PHOTO via Getty Images)

MOSCOW—A series of explosions rocked the same Russian ammo depot in Siberia for the second time in a week on Friday, Aug. 9, injuring five people, the TASS news agency cited doctors as saying.

A fire broke out following the explosions at the site in the Krasnoyarsk region, TASS reported.

Interfax cited an unnamed source, saying a lightning strike caused the explosions, the Moscow Times reported.

Explosions ripped through the same site on Monday, killing one and injuring 14 others, prompting authorities to evacuate thousands of people from nearby areas.

Rare footage shows the Aug. 5 blastwave, racing out from an explosion at the Russian ammunitions depot.

Other photographs and videos show a huge orange and black fireball mushroom up from the horizon, while a shower of yellow munitions fans out like a firework.

A view shows flame and smoke rising from the site of blasts at an ammunition depot near the town of Achinsk in Krasnoyarsk region, Russia August 5, 2019. (Reuters/Dmitry Dub)

Officials at the nearby city of Achinsk, which has a population of just over 100,000 people, said that they had been monitoring radiation levels hourly since the explosion, but that no excessively harmful substances had been registered. Gamma-ray radiation had remained at regular natural background levels, said city officials in a statement.

The ammunitions depot is near Russia’s biggest processing plant for alumina, the raw ore that is smelted into aluminum. Production at the plant, which is owned by Rusal, was shut down due to the explosion, reported Reuters.

Explosion at Ballistic Missile Testing Facility in Russia

Two people were killed and 6 injured on Thursday, Aug. 8 after a rocket engine blew up at a testing site in northern Russia, forcing authorities to shut down part of a bay in the White Sea to shipping.

A brief spike in radiation reported by authorities in the nearby city of Severodvinsk, inhabited by 185,000 people, apparently contradicted the defense ministry, which had earlier been quoted by state media as saying radiation was normal.

RIA news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying no dangerous substances had been released into the atmosphere by the explosion of what it called a liquid-propellant rocket engine in the Arkhangelsk region.

Russian media said an area near Nyonoksa is used for tests on weapons including ballistic and cruise missiles that are used by the Russian navy.

A Russian Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile system rides through Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2017. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

An official at the northern port of Arkhangelsk said an area of the Dvina Bay in the White Sea had been closed to shipping for a month because of the incident.

“The area is closed,” the official, Sergei Kozub, said, without giving further details about the reasons for the move.

Officials did not give full details about the size or location of the area that was closed, but it did not appear to include Arkhangelsk itself, a major port for the export of oil products and coal.

Epoch Times reporter Simon Veazey and NTD staff contributed to this article.