A drone strike sparked a huge fire at an oil depot in the port of Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian fleet on the Moscow-annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, according to local authorities.
“There is a fire in progress at an oil depot in the Kazachia Bay (…). According to initial information, it was caused by a drone attack,” the pro-Russian governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvojayev, wrote on Telegram.
At first, the leader reported the impact of a single drone, but in a later update he found that at least two attacked two fuel tanks.
Sixty firefighters were deployed to try to put out the flames that spread over a space of about one square kilometer.
As reported, there were no injuries as a result of this fire.
Ukraine confirmed the situation, although without explicitly taking responsibility for the fact. “An oil depot is on fire in Sevastopol after being hit by a drone in the early morning,” Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on Twitter.
The official accompanied the message with a video showing a huge column of smoke emerging from the flames of the facilities hit.
Since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, which Russia annexed in 2014, has been attacked multiple times by aerial and naval drones.
kyiv has repeatedly claimed that it will retake the territory along with others controlled by the Kremlin since launching the full-scale invasion last year.
