Two sappers from Gliwice base died and four others were injured in an explosion in a forest nearby Kuźnia Raciborska (Silesian Voivodeship). Two of them are in critical condition.
The dead and injured were soldiers from the 6th Airborne Battalion in Gliwice. The spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command, Lieutenant Colonel Marek Pawlak, informed that the explosion took place during the removal of unexploded ordinances. Two soldiers died at the scene.
The most heavily injured soldiers were taken by Polish Medical Air Service helicopters to specialist hospitals in Sosnowiec and Katowice. Two with less severe injuries were taken to a hospital in Rybnik.
The explosion occured on Tuesday early afternoon in a forest between Kuźnia Raciborska and Ruda Kozielska, about 1 kilometer from the closest roads - Pańska and Leśna streets.
The spokesman for the Racibórz Police, Mirosław Szymański, said that the ordinance that had exploded, most likely, dates back to the times of the WWII. He added that it could have been a mortar shell.
The local government has summoned a crisis group. The mayor of Kuźnia Raciborska, Paweł Macha, said that unexploded ordinances are being found in the forest on a regular basis. "This place has this problem since the war," he said.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, PAP
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: TVN 24