Area near Ukraine nuclear plant hit again despite US pleas
NIKOPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Russian shelling across the river from Ukraine's main atomic plant wounded four people on Monday, an official said, only hours after the latest international pleas to spare the area from attacks to prevent a nuclear disaster.
Nikopol, on the the opposite bank of the Dnieper River and about 10 kilometers (six miles) downstream from the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, came under fire three times overnight from rockets and mortar shells, hitting houses, a kindergarten, the bus station and stores.
Mayor Oleksandr Saiuk said four people were wounded, including two who were hospitalized.
Reports of sustained shelling around Europe's largest nuclear power plant further highlighted the dangers of a war that will hit the half-year mark on Wednesday.
After U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres again urged caution during a visit to Ukraine last week, U.S. President Joe Biden further discussed the issue with the leaders of France, Germany and Britain on Sunday.
The four leaders stressed the need to avoid military operations in the region to prevent the possibility of a potentially devastating nuclear incident and called for the U.N.'s atomic energy agency to be allowed to visit the facilities as soon as possible.
But nothing seemed certain in a war that has spread fear and unease far beyond the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine and also into the Russia-annexed Crimea Peninsula and as far as Moscow, where on Saturday night a car blast killed the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist often referred to as “Putin’s brain.”
On Monday, Russian authorities were looking for further clues who could be behind her death, after authorities said preliminary information indicated 29-year-old television commentator Daria Dugina was killed by an...
