Ukraine: Blazing inferno comes dangerously near to Chernobyl site

Wildfires inUkrainehave spread dangerously close to the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant where the world's worst nuclear disaster took place.

A video of the incident was posted by a Chernobyl tour operator showed flames and a cloud of smoke rising from the sitespread to just over a mile.

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The fire had reached the abandoned city of Pripyat and was just 2 kilometresaway from the nuclear power plant and the Pidlisny radioactive waste disposal site.

The carcass of Chernobyl’s Unit 4 nuclear reactor is within sight of the wildfires.Witnesses have accused thegovernment of covering up severity of blaze near site of nuclear disaster.

Ukraine’s emergency service on Monday said the fire was “difficult” but called for calm, saying all radiation levels in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, were normal and urging people not to listen to “apocalyptic messages”.

The agency said 310 firefighters and dozens of fire trucks, as well as three aircraft and three helicopters, had been deployed to extinguish the fire.

Fires have been burning since 4 April in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, the 30-kilometrearea around the former nuclear reactor where authorities have barred people from living.