BELGOROD, April 22. /TASS/. The bomb found in a neighborhood in Belgorod, which was rocked by an explosion on April 20, has been moved out of the residential area, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel on Saturday.
"The ammunition has been removed from the residential area. People are beginning to come back to their apartments," Gladkov wrote.
Regional health minister Andrey Ikonnikov wrote on his Telegram channel that during the evacuation two people received medical help and that ambulance crews evacuated eleven disabled people.
Earlier, Gladkov said on his Telegram channel that an explosive devise had been found near Shalandin Street, where an explosion occurred on April 20. The Defense Ministry’s bomb disposal experts decided to disarm it at a training ground. About 3,000 residents were ordered to evacuate from 17 nearby apartment buildings to temporary accommodation shelters. Alexey Botvinyev, the Belgorod Region’s housing and utilities minister, said that that the houses were cut from water and electricity supplies.
Sergey Potapov, chief of the Emergencies Ministry’s regional branch, told reporters that a regional emergency was declared after a bomb had been found in Shalandin Street in Belgorod.
"A high-capacity shell was found, and therefore the regional emergencies commission decided to declare a regional state of emergency. All emergency services are involved in this work. Bomb disposal experts assessed the situation, and in their opinion, the shell is not explosive," Potapov said.
An explosion ripped through Belgorod in the evening of April 20. A crater of a 20-meter radius formed on a central street. There people sustained injuries. The Russian Defense Ministry later stated that on April 20 at about 10:15 p.m. Moscow time, there was an emergency ejection of an air ordnance during the flight of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ Su-34 over Belgorod. There were no casualties in the incident. An investigation is under way.