Kyiv, Ukraine — Officials at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant said the site was attacked by Ukrainian military drones on Sunday, including a strike on the dome of the plant’s sixth unit.
According to plant authorities, there was no critical damage or casualties and radiation levels at the plant were normal after the strikes. However, later on Sunday, Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom said three people had been injured in “a series of unprecedented drone attacks”, particularly when a drone hit an area near the site’s canteen.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday that its experts had been informed of the drone strike and that “such a detonation is consistent with IAEA observations.”
Without assigning responsibility, the head of the UN atomic watchdog agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, warned of the security risks of such attacks.
“I call for refraining from any action that would contradict the 5 principles of the IAEA and jeopardize nuclear security,” he said on the social networking site X.
The power plant has been caught in the crossfire since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in 2022 and seized the facility soon after. The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern about the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, amid fears of a potential nuclear disaster. Ukraine and Russia regularly accuse each other of having attacked the factory, always close to the front lines.
The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and trained personnel to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.
Also on Sunday, three people were killed when their house was hit by a Russian projectile in the front-line town of Huliaipole in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine, the regional governor said Ivan Fedorov. Later on Sunday, two people were injured in another bombing on Huliaipole.
Separately, three people were injured during Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region, northeast of Ukraine, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.
In Russia, a young girl died and four others were injured when debris from a downed Ukrainian drone fell on a car carrying a family of six in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
ABC News
