A series of explosions on a military train carrying ammunition triggered a wildfire in central Siberia on Wednesday.
A train car carrying scrapped 30-mm artillery shells caught fire, detonating the ammunition and sending fragments flying up to 200 meters, threatening a nearby town in the Novosibirsk region.
The train car - one of 72 - was completely incinerated, setting ablaze the dry vegetation across a vast hard-to-access area.
The Defense Ministry provided six helicopters to dump water on the blaze, which threatened to wipe out the town of Tikhomirovo.
An unspecified number of residents had to be evacuated from their homes.
An Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman for the Novosibirsk region said the fire was not extinguished completely and high winds could cause it to flare up again.
