Russia evacuates 1800 after arms stockpile fire

Russian emergency workers evacuated about 1,800 people from their homes Friday after a fire broke out at a military base in the country's far east, sparking an explosion of stored shells. Russian Railways, the company that manages the country's vast rail network, said it had closed down a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway because of the incident and was expecting train delays. Residents of two villages close to the base where Soviet-era shells were stored have been evacuated, and another two villages are being cleared, a spokeswoman for the far eastern branch of the emergency ministry told AFP. The four villages have a total population of about 1,800 people, she said. The blaze triggered a chain of blasts that left two soldiers slightly injured, the ministry said, with rescue workers unable to put out the flames as artillery shells continued to explode three hours later. The defense ministry said there were about 489 train wagons containing 100-millimetre shells at the base. The base lies seven kilometers (four miles) from a train station in the nearest village of Sungach, close to the Chinese border and about 200 kilometers north of the port city of Vladivostok. The Russian military oversees an immense stockpile of outdated munitions that are poorly maintained and frequently explode, causing casualties and deaths. The previous such accident killed five soldiers in the Nizhny Novgorod region of central Russia earlier this month.