NIZHNY NOVGOROD. June 13 (Interfax) - Firefighters have managed to put out open fire at a military depot in the Buzuluk district of the Orenburg region, Oleg Zugeyev, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry's Volga Regional Center, told Interfax on Wednesday morning.
"The open fire has been extinguished, and it is now being watered and checked. We are planning to allow civilians to return home and start withdrawing a federal unit of the Emergency Situations Ministry forces," Zugeyev said.
Another spokesman, Mikhail Turkov, told Interfax that, as was planned earlier, the residents of the nearby village, who had been evacuated when the fire broke out, should be able to start returning to their homes at 2:00 p.m. Moscow time. "Three houses have been destroyed and five others slightly damaged, with their windows broken and roofs holed," he said.
A total of 500 people and 95 pieces of machinery are working at the scene now, including 72 people and 23 vehicles from the Emergency Situations Ministry, he said.
"As many as 1,200 explosive objects have been removed from the area surrounding the base," he said.
Explosions at the depot have stopped, Turkov said. "They stopped early in the morning; there had been occasional pops before that," he said.
It was reported earlier that a fire had broken out at an ammunition depot 14 kilometers away from the village of Koltubanovka in the Buzuluk district of the Orenburg region on Monday. The fire caused munitions to start exploding.
Artillery rounds that were stored at the depot had been intended for disposal, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office said.
The fire and the blasts following it did not cause casualties among the military or civilian personnel, it said.