Huge Explosion at Donetsk Chemical Plant

Witnesses saw the sky lit up by the explosion, some nearby living residents had their windows broken by the blast’s shockwave and many others felt the ground shake, RIA Novosti reported. Even those living in nearby towns said they felt the tremor.

“The epicenter of the blast was near DKZHI,” co-chairman of the anti-Kiev People’s Front Konstantin Dolgov said on his Facebook page.

The factory is known for producing chemical products used for industrial explosives, ammunition and equipment artillery bombs. This is not the first time the plant has been the target of a Kiev attack.

It was also hit with artillery rockets in September and November, RT reported.

The militia forces could not immediately confirm if there were casualties, including civilian.

“Accurate data about what happened will be available by morning,” a militia spokesperson told TASS. “The explosion occurred in the industrial zone in Donetsk’s Kuibyshevsky District. It was most likely the hit of an artillery shell.”

Ukrainian military deployed multiple rocket system Smerch (the BM-30 Tornado) to shell the area in the city, Boris Filatov, former deputy head of the industrial Dnepropetrovsk Region and a member of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), said on his Facebook page.

According to Filatov, the men who fired the missiles “do not know what they hit because they were shooting based on coordinates.”

Earlier, Ukrainian far-right politician and warlord Dmitry Yarosh, who is involved in the Kiev military action in southeastern Ukraine, confirmed on his Facebook page that the explosion was caused by Ukrainian artillery.