Kazakhstan: Nine dead, four still missing after explosion at ammunition depot

Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry on August 27 said that nine people have died following a series of explosions at an arms depot in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz. The ministry informed that emergency services workers and military staff were among victims of the blasts that tore through a defence ministry ammunition warehouse on Thursday. The officials added that currently, four people are still missing and feared dead. The defence ministry said that a fire had broken out at the Jambyl ammunitions depot, and it then "quickly spread” to storage facilities where engineering ammunition is stored. Several explosions followed, the ministry added. It said that the explosions stopped over time; however, the fire continues.

Criminal case initiated 

Traffic and railway officials said they have closed off the road and a railway passing through the region. In a series of tweets, Kazakhstan President Qasym-Jomart Toqayev said that the wounded were military servicemen or emergency workers, and the incident was being investigated. “A criminal case was initiated,” the president added. 

The defence ministry also informed that residents of four villages, including one of 250 people less than a kilometre from the blast site, were being evacuated. The emergencies ministry said that the scattering radius of the fragments was up to two kilometres. The explosion had taken place not far from a major road connecting provincial centre Taraz to Almaty, the country’s business hub and biggest city. 

Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that back in 2019, four people were killed and dozens injured in a similar accident in the Kazakh town of Arys in the adjacent Turkestan region. Blasts at a munitions depot forced authorities to evacuate the whole town of approximately 44,000 people. That recent blast was the third lethal explosion in the town’s vicinity in the space of a decade.

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