Kiev - A massive army munitions depot fire and exploding ammunition forced the evacuation of thousands of villagers in east Ukraine, Channel 5 television reported Thursday.

The nighttime blaze near the town Lozova in Ukraine's Kharkiv province had produced hundreds of detonations so far, threatening firefighters with shrapnel and making quick control of the fire impossible, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said.

Two storage buildings the Soviet-era artillery shell and rocket dump were burning, and 120-millimetre mortar rounds were detonating "almost every minute" said Viktor Baloga, a government spokesman.

Kiev- Top Ukrainian politicians were split on Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev's recognition of the independance of the Georgian breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Pro-Russia politician Viktor Yanukovich, head of Ukraine's opposition Regions party, supported Medvedev's move, saying "Ukraine should respect the will of the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

In an Interfax news agency interview, Yanukovich said the status of the two regions was similar to Kosovo's separation from Serbia, and argued Ukraine should recognise the independence of both renegade Georgian provinces.

Kiev- Ukraine will for the foreseeable future not deliver any more weapons shipments to Georgia, engaged in hostilities with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax news agency reported Monday.

"In this phase we will examine the possibility of giving political and humanitarian help to Tbilisi," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Konstantin Yeliseyev said in Kiev.

He justified earlier arms shipments to Georgia from Ukraine as not violating any international norms.

Prague  - A Polish woman, a Ukrainian man and three Czechs were among the seven victims of Friday's train accident in eastern Czech Republic, the worst in 13 years, police said Saturday.

Revising its earlier reports, police said that four young women and two men, one young and one middle-aged, died when a speeding international train with some 400 passengers onboard rammed into a collapsed bridge in the north-eastern town of Studenka.

Kiev - Seven persons died in a bloody Ukrainian auto smashup on a highway near the Crimean city of Simferopol, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.

The accident took place when a small four-seat car with seven people left its lane and collided with a lorry travelling in the opposite direction.

The heavy freight vehicle tore off the left side and roof of the smaller Soviet-era VAZ passenger car, which ended in a ditch.

All seven occupants of the VAZ - including three children, one a 6-month-old baby - died. The lorry driver suffered light injuries.

The seven people were members of two families heading to the Black Sea for a summer holiday, according to the report.