According to Ukrainian sources, nine people were injured in a Russian bomb attack in southern Ukraine near the country’s second largest nuclear power plant. The bombs hit a residential building and other houses in Voznesensk in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram on Saturday.

According to preliminary information, three children were among the injured, two of whom were in a “critical” condition. The regional governor of Mykolaiv, Vitali Kim, had previously reported on Telegram that nine were injured. Among them are four children and young people between the ages of three and 17 who are “all in critical condition”.

Voznesensk is about 20 kilometers away from Ukraine’s second largest nuclear power plant in Pivdennoukrainsk. The Russian attack in the 30-kilometer zone around the power plant is “another cynical act of nuclear terrorism,” said the Ukrainian power plant operator Energoatom on Telegram.

It cannot be ruled out that the projectiles were fired in the direction of the power plant. The Russian military had already tried to capture the nuclear power plant in early March, the operator added.

The “terrorist country” Russia has fired on a residential building, wrote the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, on Telegram. “Our job is to ensure that not only today’s generation of Russians are held accountable, but also their children and grandchildren,” he added. Russia will “pay for everything”.

The Ukrainian army said it shot down four Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea near the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. According to the army, there were also Russian attacks near Bakhmut, Saitseve and Kodema in the heavily contested Donetsk region in the east of the country. “Fighting continues,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Saturday.

Europe is also looking to Zaporizhia with concern. The nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March, is the largest in Europe. It has already been shot at several times. Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for the attacks.

Against the background of the ongoing attacks on the site, the Presidents of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, spoke out on Friday for a rapid inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). (AFP)