Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 10th March. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi on Thursday in a statement issued stated that Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant had to switch to backup generators once again, after losing all power. After the biggest missile attack on Ukraine in weeks, trotted by the UN nuclear watch dog agency.
Grossi said that this is the first time the site has lost all power since November 2022 – but the sixth time that all off-site power has been cut since the Russian invasion last February in a statement to agency directors.
IAEA said late on Thursday that power had been restored after 11 tense hours of being completely disconnected.
It noted that the plant has been occupied by Russian forces since the invasion but IAEA experts are deployed there and Ukrainian civilians continue to operate the plant, under the watch of the Russian military.
Secretary-General António Guterres noted that the IAEA had been “fully mobilized” to try and preserve the safety and security of nuclear facilities throughout Ukraine and called for the full demilitarization of the entire area around Zhaporizhzhya.
IAEA chief Grossi warned “Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out,”
He added that “there is enough diesel on site for 15 days” to supply the plant’s “essential” needs but that the situation at Europe’s largest nuclear power station remains critical.
Mr. Grossi said in an appeal for action to resolve the conflict and guarantee the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure, that he was astonished “by the complacency” of the international community.
He said he would continue to urgently consult Ukrainian and Russian authorities to help avert a potential nuclear disaster, should the reactor lose power altogether.
UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told journalists at UN Headquarters on Thursday that Russia launched a “massive wave of strikes”, killed civilians in several regions
Russian missiles also struck civilian infrastructure in many parts of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Haq said
Haq reported “The strikes – the first of this type in more than a month – hit power infrastructure across the country. In Kyiv, nearly 40 per cent of the people have been left without heat, while 15 per cent of homes and businesses lost access to electricity, according to the authorities”.
He noted that in Kharkiv1.4 million people now lacked heating, electricity and water.
“In Kherson, the local authorities and our partners on the ground tell us that at least three civilians were killed at a bus stop in the city centre, which was understood to be hit by a missile.”
Civilians were killed and injured in the far west of Ukraine, in Lviv, close to the border with Poland, he added.
Mr. Haq said houses and other infrastructure were damaged in Zaporizhzhya and other front-line regions.
He added “As the Secretary-General stressed yesterday in Kyiv, the UN has stayed on the ground” “delivering desperately needed humanitarian aid to millions of people in Ukraine,” he concluded.
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