World News | Russian Air Force Accidentally Bombs Its Own City

MOSCOW, April 21 (AP) – The Russian military admitted that a bomb accidentally dropped by a warplane caused a powerful explosion in a Russian city not far from the Ukrainian border, injuring two people and terrifying residents.

Belgorod, a city of 340,000 about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has been regularly attacked by drones during Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine.

Read also | Donald Trump storms Florida, throwing rival Ron DeSantis out of the 2024 presidential race.

Russian authorities blamed the earlier attack on the Ukrainian military, which has not directly claimed responsibility.

The blast late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before.

Read also | Pakistan’s media watchdog has warned cable operators not to broadcast Indian channels.

Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by an explosion that shook nearby apartment buildings and shattered windows.

It left a 20-meter (66-foot) wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartments, damaged several cars and threw one onto the roof of a shop. Two people were injured and a third was later hospitalized with high blood pressure, authorities said.

Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers abounded with theories about what weapons Ukraine used to carry out the attack. Many of them called for harsh reprisals.

But about an hour later, the Russian Ministry of Defense admitted that the explosion was caused by an accidental release of weapons from one of the country’s Su-34 bombers.

The ministry did not provide any further details, but military experts said the weapon was likely a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.

Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been programmed to delay its detonation slightly after impact, allowing it to hit the underground facility.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod region, said local authorities had decided to temporarily house residents of a nine-story apartment building while it was inspected to make sure it was not suffering from conditions that made it unsafe to live in. structural damage.

Russian commentators questioned why the warplanes flew over Belgorod and urged the military to avoid such dangerous overflights in the future.

In October, a Russian warplane crashed next to a residential building in the Sea of ​​Azov port city of Yeysk, killing 15 people. Yesk hosts a large Russian air base, and warplanes fly over Ukraine.

Military experts pointed out that as the number of Russian military aircraft increased sharply during the fighting, so did the number of crashes and fire incidents.

In another deadly incident in the Belgorod region, two volunteer soldiers opened fire on Russian troops at a military shooting range, killing 11 and wounding 15 before being shot dead. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)