ROSTOV-ON-DON. Oct 24 (Interfax) - Military prosecutors have launched a probe into reports that ammunition, presumably from the Ashuluk military testing ground near Astrakhan, has arrived at a scrap metal acceptance outlet.
"The Military Prosecutor's Office of the Southern Military District is checking reports claiming that a large amount of ammunition, presumably from the Ashuluk testing ground, has arrived at a scrap metal purchase station. An inquiry will be conducted into whether ammunition disposal was proceeding in compliance with the law," a spokesman for the military district's Military Prosecutor's Office told Interfax.
Police discovered several dozen tonnes of ammunition from the Ashuluk military testing ground at a scrap metal purchase outlet, spokesman for the Astrakhan regional police department Pyotr Rusanov told Interfax earlier on Sunday.
"Both exploded and unexploded ammunition was discovered. An employee of the scarp metal purchase outlet said the ammunition had arrived from a military testing ground in the Kharabala district," Rusanov said.
He said later that the ammunition did not contain explosives and was no thereat to local civilians. "Sappers have established that the ammunition was empty and only carried traces of explosives. It is not a threat to civilians. The batch weighed 29 tonnes," Rusanov said.
Ashuluk is a military testing ground in Russia's Astrakhan region east of the Ashuluk railway station. Surface-to-air systems are tested and troops learn to handle such systems there. Its official name is the 42nd Center for Training Surface-to-Air Systems Crews.
An explosion that went off at the Ashuluk testing ground on August 23 2011 killed eight people.
Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin asked Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov a few days ago to suspend ammunition disposal at the Ashuluk testing ground, in which ten servicemen have been killed since the start of the year, the chief of Lukin's office, Georgy Pospelovsky, told Interfax-AVN.
The Defense Ministry had assured Lukin on several occasions earlier that, "the situation at the Ashuluk testing ground is under control," he said.