Over a dozen apartment buildings in Belgorod, Russia, were evacuated on Saturday following an alert regarding an explosive device in the same area where a Russian warplane accidentally dropped a bomb over the city.
The governor of Belgorod province, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported that combat engineers had been examining the site of Thursday's blast when they found an “explosive object” that was “in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings,” which they decided to detonate. In response, 17 apartment buildings were evacuated, with Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov stating that evacuations ended later on in the day, according to the Associated Press.
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“The bomb was removed from the residential area. Residents are being delivered back to their homes,” Demidov wrote on Telegram.
The first explosion on Thursday night occurred when a Russian Su-34 plane of the Russian Aerospace Forces was performing a flight over Belgorod, which is roughly 25 miles north of the border with Ukraine. The plane dropped a munition over the city, with the explosion leaving a crater with a radius of about 20 yards and at least three people injured.
“At around 22:15 Moscow time on April 20, when a Su-34 plane of the Russian Aerospace Forces was performing a flight above the city of Belgorod, an emergency release of an air ordnance occurred,” the Russian Defense Ministry, per Russian state media, Tass said.
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The explosion took place as Russia continues the war in Ukraine, which started in February of last year. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western states to accelerate the delivery of weapons necessary to conduct a long-expected counteroffensive against Russia's invading forces.
“Some things have to be pushed [ahead] to have relevant armaments to strengthen our army come to our country sooner,” Zelensky said Thursday during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. “Even, probably, sooner than it was scheduled.”