Turkmenistan on Friday insisted mystery explosions outside Ashgabat were caused by fireworks but unofficial sources said a military arms depot had blown up in a potentially massive accident.

An opposition website outside Turkmenistan, one of the world's most isolated states, said the explosions in Abadan, just 20 kilometres (15 miles) from the capital, killed many people, caused wide destruction and sparked mass looting.

Three concurring sources who asked not to be named told an AFP correspondent the explosions took place Thursday afternoon at a military arms depot in Abadan but did not give details on any casualties.

The AFP correspondent saw a vast plume of smoke billowing from the depot late Thursday while a Turkmen official said that the city was partially evacuated to protect the population. Some blasts were heard in Ashgabat itself.

There were prolonged power cuts in the capital, which gets its electricity from a gas-powered plant in Abadan.

The city is home to a military base and air field that was used by Soviet forces during the 1980s war in Afghanistan, with a munitions silo running nearly two kilometres (1.2 miles) length, said the Moscow-based Ferghana.ru website editor Daniil Kislov.

With speculation growing over the cause and potential scale of the incident, the foreign ministry early Friday issued a highly unusual statement to say the accident was caused by fireworks explosions.

"The fireworks kept in a special store outside of Abadan exploded as a result of the hot weather," it said. "There are no victims or major destruction. The population is being given all necessary help."

However in a possible sign of the magnitude of the accident, it said that the explosions had been discussed at a joint cabinet and national security council meeting chaired by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

A source in the Abadan regional authorities told AFP that "some buildings will have to be completely restored" and that army and police units were at the scene.

The official, who asked not to be named, said gas, electricity and water had been cut in the city but were now being restored. The source said there were "wounded" but denied there were any deaths.

The opposition rights website Khronika Turkmenistana, which is blocked inside Turkmenistan, said without citing sources that the death toll was approaching 200 people.

"People who collected these data say that 100 of them are servicemen and the rest -- civilians, including children," the opposition website said.

It added that security forces were confiscating mobile phones and other portable video equipment from people so that they could not show what happened on the Internet.

By Friday afternoon. the smoke had disappeared but the road from Ashgabat to Abadan was still closed to the public and numerous police and emergency services headed to the scene, the AFP correspondent said.

The gas-rich Central Asian nation is the most reclusive state to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union and is notorious for its low transparency.

Berdymukhamedov is seeking to very cautiously ease the country out of its extreme isolation under his eccentric predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov who died in 2006, although critics say stabs at reform have been little more than window-dressing.

He has cut back on some of the excesses of Niyazov, known as the Turkmenbashi, and last year removed a golden statue of his predecessor in Ashgabat which rotated to face the sun.

Both Ashgabat and Abadan are in the extreme south of Turkmenistan, close to the borders with Iran and Afghanistan. In Soviet times, numerous military bases were installed in the region.

"There is still a gigantic number of munitions stores on the territory of the former USSR," Pavel Felgenhauer, defence columnist for Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper, told AFP.

"The munitions are old, unstable, past their expiration dates and explode due to mistakes by the military or even just from being picked up," he added.

Tweet

Related Links News From Across The Stans