Ukrainian Soldier Shoots Down Colleagues at Ukrainian Missile Factory

Ukrainian police have detained a national guard soldier who is suspected to have opened fire at a missile and rocket factory in Dnipro killing five other people including his colleagues on Thursday.

The shooting took place at the Yuzhmash factory during the issuance of weapons to the guards. There were reportedly 22 people in the room at the time. The factory was once a production site for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and was tightly guarded even before the latest tensions.

While some reports say the deceased included five other soldiers, a few others claimed four servicemen and a civilian woman were among the victims.

The alleged gunman is a 21-year-old who served on the National Guard of Ukraine. He reportedly fled the Southern Machine Building dressed in camouflage concealing an AK-47 assault rifle, reports say.

The motive behind the attack is not clear.

“Following my order, a commission will be set up to study the circumstances that led to these actions being taken by a 21-year-old soldier, who had been called to defend his country and be responsible for security – and not to shoot hi colleagues,” Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, said on Facebook.

Anton Gerashchenko, the country’s deputy interior minister, said on Facebook that investigators would look into how the soldier, Artem Ryabchuk, passed a medical commission that allowed him access to weapons. “He will suffer the most severe punishment for the mass murder. Now the most important thing is to find and detain Artem Ryabchuk as soon as possible before he has time to commit new crimes,” Gerashchenko said.

Dnipro is one of the largest cities in the country and over 100 miles from the frontline of the war in eastern Ukraine, where the Ukrainian military has been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014.