Three people have been killed in Russian strikes on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, in a second day of deadly attacks on the area, its governor said.
The strike on the rural area came a day after three people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Gulyaipole.
Governor Ivan Federov said Russian forces struck eight populated areas in Zaporizhzhia “357 times” over the last 24 hours.
It comes as Russia’s nuclear power corporation, Rosatom, accused Ukraine’s military of launching a series of attacks on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station and the UN’s nuclear watchdog called for such incidents to cease immediately.
Rosatom said three people were hurt, one seriously.
Russia urged world leaders to denounce the incidents which occurred yesterday.
Both Russian officials and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said radiation levels were normal and damage not severe.
A Ukrainian intelligence official said Kyiv had nothing to do with any strikes on the station, the largest in Europe and suggested they were the work of Russians themselves.
Reuters was unable immediately to verify battlefield accounts from either side.
Russian troops seized the plant in the first weeks of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Each side accuses the other of attacking the plant, which lies close to the front lines of the 25-month-old conflict and risking a nuclear disaster.
A Rosatom statement said the first strike on the plant hit an area near a canteen, injuring the three staff members, but did not indicate what weapon had been involved.
Within a half hour, it said, a drone had attacked a cargo loading area and another drone subsequently struck the dome of the sixth reactor.
The statement said Rosatom “categorically denounces the unprecedented attack” and called on IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and the European Union to immediately react to the threat to safety.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged world leaders to condemn the act of “nuclear terrorism”.
“How many more times must the Ukrainian military target the Zaporizhzhia plant in order for the West and that monster Zelensky, nurtured by them, to stop repeating this deadly act of their bloody circus?” she wrote on Telegram, referring to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s HUR Main Intelligence Directorate, Andriy Usov, denied any involvement.
“Russian strikes, including imitation ones, on the territory of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant … have long been a well-known criminal practice of the invaders,” he wrote on Telegram.
The IAEA, which has experts at the site, reported on social media platform X that there had been a single casualty.
IAEA experts confirmed physical impact of drone attacks at ZNPP today, incl. at 1 of its 6 reactors.
One casualty reported. Damage at unit 6 has not compromised nuclear safety, but this is a serious incident w/ potential to undermine integrity of the reactor’s containment system. pic.twitter.com/FvMsb4I4vs— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) April 7, 2024
“Damage at unit 6 has not compromised nuclear safety, but this is a serious incident w/ potential to undermine integrity of the reactor’s containment system,” the agency said.
Mr Grossi added there had been three “direct hits” to such structures.
“This cannot happen,” he wrote.
The nuclear plant has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing Uranium 235 and also has spent nuclear fuel at the facility.
Reactors one, two, five and six are in cold shutdown, while reactor three is shut down for repair and reactor four is in so-called hot shutdown, according to the plant.
