Five Russian servicemen were killed Wednesday in a munitions blast at a military firing range in central Russia, the latest deadly accident to hit the armed forces, the defence ministry said. The explosion took place as the soldiers were unloading expired stores of munitions at the Mulinsky base in the Nizhny Novgorod region of central Russia, the defence ministry said in a statement to Russian news agencies. “As a result of the explosion, five soldiers were killed and three were wounded,” the statement said. Fatal accidents are frequent in the Russian armed forces which have struggled to modernise equipment since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In July 2010, six people were killed in a similar accidental explosion at a Russian military firing range in Siberia.
