Russia’s Belgorod Sees Mass Evacuations Over Undetonated bomb

More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the Russian city of Belgorod after an undetonated explosive was found.

It comes two days after Russia accidentally dropped a bomb on the same city, damaging houses and injuring several people.

It’s not known if the bomb discovered on Saturday came from the same aircraft – a Russian Sukhoi-34 fighter-jet.

The city is located about 40km (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

The local governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, confirmed on Telegram that 17 apartment buildings had to be cordoned off “within a radius of 200 metres”, affecting 3,000 residents.

He later said people were starting to return to their homes after a “shell” had been removed.

The undetonated device was found in the same area as the bomb that was accidentally dropped on Thursday evening, leaving a huge crater about 20 metres (60 ft) wide close to the city centre.

The explosion was so large it blew a car onto the roof of a nearby shop.

After that incident, the Russian defence ministry admitted that one of its Su-34 jets had “accidentally discharged aircraft ordnance” over the city.

Dramatic CCTV footage of Thursday’s blast shows an object landing near a crossroads with passing cars, and detonating about 18 seconds later.

It’s not the first such incident – last October a Sukhoi fighter-jet – again, an Su-34 – crashed in the Russian city of Yeysk killing at least 13 people.

Russian jets regularly fly over Belgorod, a city of 370,000, on their way to Ukraine.

It lies just north of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and has come under periodic Ukrainian attack since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine last year.

Credit: BBC