UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on August 8 for international inspectors to be given access to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant after Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over the recent shelling of the facility.
Any attack on a nuclear plant "is a suicidal thing," Guterres told a news conference in Japan.
His comments followed a visit to Hiroshima over the weekend, where Guterres gave a speech to mark the 77th anniversary of the world's first nuclear bomb attack.
Ukraine said renewed Russian shelling on August 6 had damaged three radiation sensors and hurt a worker at the Zaporizhzhya facility, Europe's largest nuclear-power plant. It was the second strike to hit the plant in consecutive days. Russia has claimed that Ukraine is responsible for the strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of waging "nuclear terror" that warranted more international sanctions, this time on Moscow's nuclear sector.
"There is no such nation in the world that could feel safe when a terrorist state fires at a nuclear plant," Zelenskiy said in a televised address on August 7.
The plant, about 200 kilometers northwest of the Russian-held port of Mariupol, has been under Russian supervision since Moscow's troops seized it early in the war, but the Ukrainian staff continues to operate the facility.
The Russian-installed authority of the area said Ukrainian forces hit the site with a multiple-rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility. The Russian Embassy in Washington also released a statement blaming ‘Ukrainian nationalists” for the damage.
The fighting at the Zaporizhzhya site has alarmed the world.
Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needed access to the plant.
"We fully support the IAEA in all their efforts in relation to [creating] the conditions of stabilization of the plant," Guterres said.
IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on August 6 that the latest attack "underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”
Grossi urged all sides in the conflict to exercise the "utmost restraint" near the nuclear site.
The IAEA chief added that it was "of paramount importance" that the agency be allowed access to the plant "to provide technical support for nuclear safety and security."
