Turkmenistan: Russian Satellite Company Obtains "After" Photos from Abadan Explosion
A Russian satellite company has published images of the aftermath of the blast a week ago in Abadan, Turkmenistan ("after" is on the left and "before" is on the right).
The images, obtained July 9 by ScanEx, a Russian company that provides earth observation services, illustrate that the entire ammunitions warehouse area is charred and black with smoke, and the site is full of craters. By July 12, says ScanEx, no smoke plumes were visible.
The photos released by ScanEx Research and Development Center on the company's website only show the immediate area of the warehouse, which readers of chrono-tm.org first identified on Google Maps on July 8.
The images obtained by RADARSAT-2 were submitted to EMERCOM, Russia's Emergencies Ministry on July 9, and further images from EROS A (resolution 1.9 m) were acquired July 12.
What's not clear from these photos is what happened to everything else around the site of the warehouse and then the whole town and nearby environs, said by eyewitnesses also to have suffered damage. On Google Earth, satellite photos of Abadan taken before the explosion show roads and residential buildings which were likely affected. According to an unamed citizen journalist who took video footage, shells were landing as far as 10 kilometers away.
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