At least 37 people were killed after a Russian drone strike hit a depot near Kyiv overnight, causing a massive fire and a series of powerful explosions, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
The blast took place in Myla, a town on the western outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. A thick column of black smoke rose above the suburbs as emergency workers battled the fire and searched the damaged site, as reported by Arab News. Hundreds of residents were evacuated from the area.
Ukrainian prosecutors said the facility appeared to have been storing explosive materials. President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that ammunition may have been kept at the site, and warned that those responsible for allowing it to be stored near homes must be held accountable.
The explosion damaged nearby residential buildings, as well as a care home for elderly and disabled people. Among the dead was the mayor of the nearby town of Dmytrivka, according to Kyiv region governor Tymur Tkachenko.
The prosecutor general’s office has opened an investigation into the incident. Authorities will examine whether the storage of explosive materials was legal and whether the company had the required permits and safety approvals.
Prime Minister Sergiy Koretsky described the repeated failure to keep dangerous facilities away from residential areas as “criminal negligence.” He referred to a similar deadly strike on a munitions depot near Kyiv in July, saying that officials had failed to learn from the earlier tragedy.
The attack came as Russia and Ukraine continued to exchange intense long-range strikes. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched at least two missiles and 267 drones between late Friday and early Saturday.
Other Russian attacks killed three people in Ukraine, including a two-year-old child in Kyiv and a 14-year-old girl in the capital’s suburbs. Ukrainian strikes, meanwhile, killed three people in Russia’s Belgorod region and caused a fire at an Ozon warehouse. A separate strike in Russian-controlled Sevastopol killed one person, officials said.
