Over 130 families have been evacuated after an explosion at a military ammunition warehouse near the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Saturday evening, an official said on Sunday. The blast occurred at the warehouse owned by the Jayakarta Regional Military Command in Ciangsana Village, Bogor regency, West Java province, approximately 7 km away from Jakarta's eastern border. Reports indicate that the explosion was audible within a 7 km radius. West Java Acting Governor Bey Machmudin told local media on Saturday that evacuees were currently being housed in two separate temporary shelters. According to Jayakarta Regional Military Command Chief Mohamad Hasan, fire brigades managed to extinguish the explosions on Sunday at around 3:45 a.m. local time. He also confirmed that no fatalities were reported in the incident. Hasan explained that the fire originated in a warehouse within the military complex used for storing expired ammunition. An investigation into the cause of the fire is still under way. The blaze levelled the ammunition warehouse just outside the Indonesian capital after a series of explosions, an officer said on Sunday. The first explosion was heard at around 6 p.m. on Saturday at a depot used to store expired ammo inside a military complex near Jakarta. Twenty-seven fire trucks were deployed to the location and firefighters managed to douse the blaze. "We can confirm the fire has been put out, but we are still conducting the cooling down process at the moment to anticipate the possibility of other fire spots," Hasan said during a televised press conference. Authorities had evacuated nearby residents to safer areas as the fire tore through the storage facility but most people have since returned home, according to Hasan. He said the military had received reports that shells or other projectiles may have landed in the surrounding areas and urged people not to touch the objects, adding that the military was scouring for potentially hazardous materials. According to the military commander, the warehouse had no electricity and the explosion might have been caused by unstable expired ammunition. "We suspect this (the explosion) was caused by expired ammunition," he said. "It is possible that the chemical and explosive material was unstable." "We are investigating the area around the location and we're going to comb and clean materials that were thrown out of the depot," Hasan told reporters near the site. Firefighters used robotic cars to help put out the flames. Hasan said the ammunition were stored in the facility because the military was in the process of disposing them. — Agencies
