Bulgaria Sees 6th Ammunition Depot Blast since 2000

A photo by BGNES shows the explosion at a privately-owned ammunition depot near the Petolachkata road junction close to Sliven in Southeastern Bulgaria that occurred Tuesday afternoon.

The latest incident in which an ammunition depot exploded near the city of Sliven in Southeastern Bulgaria Tuesday afternoon is the sixth explosion at a munition storage site in Bulgaria since 2000, records shows.

The blasts at the ammo site near the Petolachkata road junction close to Sliven occurred at 2:40 pm on Tuesday, injuring at least 7 people, two of them critically. The facility in question is the property of a Sofia-based firm, Bereta Trading, which uses it to dismantle munitions – including shells from the Chelopechene military depot near Sofia that exploded in July 2008.

In reverse order, the explosions at Bulgarian munition facilities (owned by either the Defense Ministry, or private firms), are as follows:

Back on November 12, 2011, the northern Bulgarian town of Sevlievo and the villages nearby were woken up by explosions at former military storage facilities near the village of Lovnidol; the 3000 shells contained no chemical or radioactive substances, and nobody got injured.

On February 3, 2010, the Midzhur factory, which produces explosives, located in the village of Gorni Lom, Chuprene Municipality, Northwestern Bulgaria, caught fire. The ensuing explosion injured four employees, with two of them suffering serious injuries.

On August 9, 2008, the grenade storage facility at the Arsenal military plant in Kazanlak, Central Bulgaria, caught fire, leading to explosions; nobody got injured.

On July 3, 2008, in what has been Bulgaria's "most impressive" incident of its kind, the military storage site near the village of Chelopechene right outside of the Bulgarian capital Sofia exploded, with blasts lingering for days. The explosions engulfed explosive processing facilities with 2 500 tonnes of conventional munitions and 20 tonnes of TNT. Nobody got injured but the residents of the villages of Chelopech and Chepintsi, deemed districts of Sofia, were evacuated.

On July 9, 2000, a fire near several villages in the southeastern Haskovo District reached a munition storage depot near the village of Ivanovo, and led to explosions.

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