On Thursday night, the Russian city of Belgorod experienced something that generally happens to cities on the other side of the border—a Russian airstrike. Officials say the city 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border was accidentally bombed by an Su-34 fighter-bomber jet, the BBC reports. Russia's defense ministry described the incident as an "abnormal descent of aviation ammunition" and an "emergency release of an air ordnance." Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the blast left a crater 65 feet across on a main road and injured three people, reports Reuters.
Gladkov said four apartment buildings were damaged. "Thank God there are no dead," he said. The BBC reports that video shared on social media shows the bomb landing near the intersection of two roads and exploding 18 seconds later as cars passed by. According to state media, an overturned car landed on the roof of a store. Former Royal Australian Air Force officer Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, tells CNN that the incident was "odd." He says a pilot jettisoning munitions in an emergency would normally do so in an unpopulated area, with the weapons left in "safe" mode. "Where the bomb hit; the town center, not in the countryside, almost suggests accuracy," he says. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)
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