MOSCOW: UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi held more talks with Russian officials Friday over safety concerns at two nuclear power plants threatened by the fighting between Moscow and Kyiv.
He has already issued warnings over the situation at both the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Kursk power plant, near to where Kyiv has mounted its incursion into Russia.
Grossi met the head of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency Alexei Likhachev in Kaliningrad, after visiting the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeast Ukraine this week and the Kursk plant the week before.
He met with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday.
“The times remain very difficult,” Grossi told Likhachev, Russian news agencies reported.
The situation at the Kursk power plant — some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kyiv’s forces — was “worrying,” he said.
But both officials said the plant’s functioning was stable, and Grossi again urged both sides to refrain from attacking power plants.
“I said this in Zaporizhzhia, I said this in Kyiv and now I say this in Kaliningrad: power plants can never be legitimate targets in an armed conflict,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of trying to strike the Kursk plant, without providing evidence.
Likhachev said Russia “expects an adequate response” from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk is now a month long, with Kyiv laying claim to dozens of Russian border settlements.
Putin said this week that Moscow has “gradually” started to push out Kyiv’s forces from Kursk.
The Zaporizhzhia plant fell to Moscow in the first days of its offensive in 2022.
UN nuclear chief in Russia reiterates safety concerns
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UN nuclear chief in Russia reiterates safety concerns
- He has already issued warnings over the situation at both the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Kursk power plant
- Grossi met the head of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency Alexei Likhachev in Kaliningrad
Starvation fears as flood toll passes 900 in Indonesia
- More than 1,790 people have been killed in natural disasters unfolding across Southeast Asia over the past week
- Floods have swept away roads, smothered houses in silt, and cut off supplies in Indonesia's provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra
More than 1,790 people have been killed in natural disasters unfolding across Southeast Asia over the past week
Floods have swept away roads, smothered houses in silt, and cut off supplies in Indonesia's provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: Ruinous floods and landslides have killed more than 900 people on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, the country’s disaster management agency said Saturday, with fears that starvation could send the toll even higher.
A chain of tropical storms and monsoonal rains has pummelled Southeast and South Asia, triggering landslides and flash floods from the Sumatran rainforest to the highland plantations of Sri Lanka.
More than 1,790 people have been killed in natural disasters unfolding across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam over the past week.
In Indonesia’s provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, floods have swept away roads, smothered houses in silt, and cut off supplies.
Aceh governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.
However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages.
“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.
“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”
Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.
“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed, from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.
“Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he said.
Aceh Tamiang flood victim Fachrul Rozi said he had spent the past week crammed into an old shop building with others who had fled the rising waters.
“We ate whatever was available, helping each other with the little supplies each resident had brought,” he told AFP.
“We slept crammed together.”
Aceh resident Munawar Liza Zainal said he felt “betrayed” by the Indonesian government, which has so far shrugged off pressure to declare a national disaster.
“This is an extraordinary disaster that must be faced with extraordinary measures,” he told AFP, echoing frustrations voiced by other flood victims.
“If national disaster status is only declared later, what’s the point?“
Declaring a national disaster would free up resources and help government agencies coordinate their response.
Analysts have suggested Indonesia could be reluctant to declare a disaster — and seek additional foreign aid — because it would show it was not up to the task.
Indonesia’s government this week insisted it could handle the fallout.
Climate calamity
The scale of devastation has only just become clear in other parts of Sumatra as engorged rivers shrink and floodwaters recede.
AFP photos showed muddy villagers salvaging silt-encrusted furniture from flooded houses in Aek Ngadol, North Sumatra.
Humanitarian groups worry that the scale of the calamity could be unprecedented, even for a nation prone to natural disasters.
Indonesia’s death toll rose to 908 on Saturday, according to the disaster management agency, with 410 people missing.
Sri Lanka’s death toll jumped on Friday to 607, as the government warned that fresh rains raised the risk of new landslides.
Thailand has reported 276 deaths and Malaysia two, while at least two people were killed in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered a series of landslides.
Seasonal monsoon rains are a feature of life in Southeast Asia, flooding rice fields and nourishing the growth of other key crops.
However, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, unpredictable and deadly throughout the region.
Environmentalists and Indonesia’s government have also suggested that logging and deforestation exacerbated landslides and flooding in Sumatra.
