VIENNA: All external power lines supplying electricity to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine were down for several hours on Friday, the UN nuclear watchdog said, but the station’s management later said power had been restored.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, acknowledged that power had been restored after 3 1/2 hours. But he added in a statement on X that nuclear safety “remains extremely precarious in Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s energy minister blamed Russian shelling for severing the last power line to the plant and its six reactors. The country’s power distribution operator said its technicians had taken action to restore it.
Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, which is not operating but still requires power to keep its nuclear fuel cool, switched during the outage to running on diesel generators, the IAEA said.
The organization has repeatedly warned of the risk of a catastrophic accident at Zaporizhzhia, which is located near the front line in the war in Ukraine. Its reactors are shut down, but the nuclear fuel inside them still needs to be cooled, which requires constant power.
The plant’s Russia-installed management issued a statement on Telegram saying the high-voltage line to the plant had been restored.
The statement said there had been no disruptions to operations at the plant, no violations of security procedures and no rise in background radiation levels beyond normal levels.
The IAEA had earlier said that the plant had lost all off-site power for the ninth time during the military conflict and for the first time since late 2023. “The ZNPP currently relies on power from its emergency diesel generators, underlining (the) extremely precarious nuclear safety situation,” it said.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galuschenko wrote on Telegram that a Russian strike had cut off the plant.
“The enemy struck the power line connecting the temporarily occupied (Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant) with the integrated power system of Ukraine.”
Ukrenergo, the sole operator of high-voltage lines in Ukraine, said its specialists had brought it back into service.
“Ukrenergo specialists have brought back into service the high-voltage line which supplies the temporarily occupied power station,” it said on Telegram.
Neither the IAEA nor the plant’s Russian-installed management initially cited a cause for the cut-off. Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia station in the first weeks of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Each side regularly accuses the other of firing or taking other actions that could trigger a nuclear accident.
Ukraine blames Russian strike for power cut to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
https://arab.news/bqr9y
Ukraine blames Russian strike for power cut to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
- Ukrainian minister says Russian shelling caused the outage
- Ukrainian energy distribution company says it restored power
Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
MELBOURNE, Australia: A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade Daesh group flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
The largest IED was found after the gunbattle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said, using another term for the Daesh Group.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.
