Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency release is an FBIS cable dated 12 to 13 April 1991. It carries a TASS English report by correspondent Anatoliy Kakovkin about an explosion just outside Sasovo, Ryazan region, at 01:30 that morning. The blast came after a strange roar, broke most windows and left a crater 28 meters wide and 3.5 meters deep. Emergency experts found no radiation or chemical changes, and the military reported no UFOs. The mayor suggested that stored saltpeter might have exploded.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## UNCLASSIFIED EXPERTS FROM THE REGIONAL COMMISSION ON EMERGENCIES RUSHED TO THE SITE TO EXPLORE IT AND TAKE GROUND AND ATMOSPHERIC SAMPLES. THEY DID NOT, HOWEVER, DETECT ANY CHANGES IN EITHER RADIATION LEVELS OR THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE AIR. THE MILITARY, FOR THEIR PART, REPORTED NO UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS OVER THE AREA. THE UNUSUAL FORM OF THE CRATER, WHICH HAS A BIG BUMP RIGHT IN ITS CENTRE, AS WELL AS LARGE CHUNKS OF EARTH REMAINING UNBROKEN ALMOST RULE OUT THE POSSIBILITY OF A BOMB BLAST OR THE EXPLOSION OF AN ARTILLERY SHELL, ACCORDING TO SASOVO MAYOR A. ROZHKOV. HE TOLD TASS IN A TELEPHONE INTERVIEW THAT SCRAPS OF PAPER BAGS FOUND NEARBY SUGGEST THAT SOME SALTPETER, WHICH CAN SELF-EXPLODE UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, MIGHT HAVE BEEN STORED IN THE FIELD AND GONE UP IN THE AIR. THE FINAL CONCLUSION IS EXPECTED FROM THE EMERGENCY TASK FORCE INVESTIGATING THE BLAST. ADMIN (ENDALL) 121301 3/0023Z APR #2712. NNNN
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.