DONETSK (UKRAINE) - Explosions ripped through a munitions factory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels on Saturday after it came under artillery fire, local officials and AFP journalists said.
Smoke rises after a weapon factory controlled by pro-russian militants exploded near Donetsk on September 20, 2014
The factory was hit just hours after Kiev and separatist leaders reached a new peace plan aimed at shoring up a two-week old ceasefire.
No casualties were reported in the blasts at the state-owned Soviet-era plant, which is located near Donetsk airport, a key battleground in the five-month conflict in the east.
Donetsk city hall denied reports on social media that radiation had increased after the explosions, which sent clouds of white smoke into the sky.
"I was sleeping in my apartment. When the first two explosions went off I woke up, I could feel the wave of the impact, the vibrations in my body," said Bogdan, a 15-year-old schoolboy living nearby.
"I saw two big mushroom clouds and then 10 seconds later I heard a third huge explosion, so there were three in total, and I could see huge flames."
AFP journalists also heard intense fire around the airport on Saturday afternoon but the source was not known.
Under the terms of the Minsk Memorandum signed in the Belarussian capital early Saturday, fighters on both sides and heavy weapons are supposed to be pulled back from a newly created buffer zone.