Explosions near Nord Stream pipelines as gas leaks into Baltic Sea

Stockholm: Seismologists registered explosions near the Nord Stream pipelines in the last 36 hours, a media outlet reported, citing Swedish national broadcaster SVT.

SVT can reveal that measuring stations in both Sweden and Denmark registered strong underwater explosions in the same area as the gas leaks on Monday, The Gurdian reported.

"There is no doubt that these are explosions," Bjorn Lund, lecturer in seismology at the Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN), was quoted as saying by SVT.

The first explosion was recorded at 2.03 a.m. on the night of Monday and the second at 7.04 p.m. on Monday evening.

The warnings about the gas leaks came from the maritime administration at 1.52 p.m. and 8.41 p.m. on Monday, respectively, after ships detected bubbles on the surface.

SVT has obtained the coordinates of the measured explosions and they are in the same area where the gas leaks were registered, The Guardian reported.

The apparent leaks in the Nord Stream pipeline are both near the island of Bornholm, which belongs to Denmark in the Baltic sea.

Seismologist Bjorn Lund was quoted as saying that the area where they detected explosions is not an area usually used for military drills. He told SVT: "We usually get information about explosions that take place underwater, but sometimes we don't get it. In this case, we have not received any information."

According to Lund, one of the explosions had a magnitude of 2.3 on the Richter scale, and was recorded at 30 measuring stations in southern Sweden.

Prior to the reports from the seismologists, there had already been speculation about possible sabotage, as the pipeline operator had described three lines suffering significant damage within the space of a day as "unprecedented".

Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has described the major leaks in two Russian gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea as a "terrorist attack".