MOSCOW: More than six thousand people were evacuated overnight in central Russia after a series of massive explosions at an arms depot blew out windows and sparked a fire, the emergency situations ministry said Wednesday.

The blasts began Tuesday night and continued for hours after being sparked by efforts to dispose of munitions at an arms depot close to the town of Chapayevsk in the Samara region around 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from Moscow.

The depot contained around 18 million shells, the regional Investigative Committee said in a statement on Wednesday.

Russian television showed footage of huge columns of black smoke rising from the depot, while a correspondent for Rossiya 24 television at the scene said that explosions rang out every minute overnight.

Over six thousand residents were evacuated from the settlement of Nagorny around five kilometres from the depot where the explosions broke windows, the emergency situations ministry said.