Fire breaks out at Army Ammunition Depot at Kosgama -- Update 3

Fire breaks out at Army Ammunition Depot at Kosgama -- Update 3

After the explosion that took place in Salawa area Kosgama day-before-yesterday, authorized personnel have now been permitted access to conduct a survey of the Camp.

All buildings in the entire land there have been reduced to ashes and someone entering the land could see only the water tank which has been left intact. Though statistical-wise the damage sustained has

still not been estimated, diverse opinions in this respect have been expressed that there had been no large weapons or ammunition there.

Army Commander (West) Major Sudantha Ranasinghe said at a media briefing held yesterday that there were plans to remove the Kosgama Army Camp from its position there towards the end of the year 2016. As such action had been taken to transfer weapons and explosives at Kosgama to other camps and that at the time of the blast there had been less than 10 per cent remaining in the depot. If by chance the other 90 per cent were remaining, he said that the disaster would have of course been definitely excessive.  He also added that the weapons and the ammunition were all stacked according to universal standards and that an incident of this nature could happen on a random basis and that this of course is not the very first occasion that it has happened.

He went on to say that initial investigations are still being carried out about the primary cause for this fire and that he suspects that the first fire has broken out as a result of something like an electrical leak, lightning. He also mentioned that nobody lost his life within the Camp during the incident and that it was only 1 soldier who died after being admitted to the hospital. The Major General did not make any comments about as to where the weaponry in the Camp was taken to. Whatever it is, former Secretary of Defence Gotabhaya Rajapaksa who made a statement to a newspaper today said that having realised the populated environment of Kosgama, he had transported about 25,000 tons of ammunition as a part deposited in this ammunition depot to Diyatalawa and Maduru Oya; understanding that this location was not a safe place for an ammunition depot and therefore was not a suitable one. He said that during the post-war period, a large volume of the ammunition had been dispatched to the Veyangoda ammunition depot.