Aug 8 (Reuters) – UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Monday for international inspectors to be allowed access to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, after Ukraine and Russia exchanged accusations over the bombing of the world’s largest atomic plant. Europe over the weekend.
“Any attack on a nuclear plant is suicidal,” Guterres told a news conference in Japan, where he attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony on Saturday, marking the 77th anniversary of the first atomic bombing in history.
Ukraine said fresh Russian airstrikes on Saturday damaged three radiation sensors and injured a worker at the Zaporizhia power plant, the second attack on the site in consecutive days.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of exercising “nuclear terror” that justifies further international sanctions, this time on Moscow’s nuclear sector.
“There is no nation in the world that can feel safe when a terrorist state fires on a nuclear plant,” Zelensky said in a televised speech on Sunday.
Russian soldiers captured the plant in southeastern Ukraine in early March, but it remains run by Ukrainian technicians.
The Russian area authority said Ukrainian forces attacked the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a warehouse. The Russian embassy in Washington also released a statement detailing the damage.
“Ukrainian nationalists launched an artillery attack on the territory of the specified object on August 5. Two high-voltage power lines and a water pipe were damaged as a result of the shelling. Only thanks to the effective and timely action of the Russian military to cover the nuclear power facility, its critical infrastructure was not affected,” the embassy said.
Reuters was unable to verify either side’s account.
The events at the Zaporizhia site — where kyiv alleged Russia attacked a power line on Friday — have alarmed the world.
Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs access to the plant.
“We fully support the IAEA in all its efforts regarding the creation of stabilization conditions for the plant,” Guterres said.
IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday that the latest attack “underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”
Meanwhile, the deal to unblock Ukraine’s food exports and ease global shortages gained momentum as four more ships left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and the first cargo ship since the February 24 Russian invasion docked.
The four ships left with almost 170,000 tons of corn and other food. They set sail under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to try to ease world food prices, which have soared as a result of the war.
Before the invasion of Moscow on February 24, which Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for almost a third of world wheat exports. The disruption has since threatened famine in some parts of the world.
(Reporting from Reuters newsrooms; written by Stephen Coates; edited in Spanish by Benjamín Mejías Valencia)