New Delhi, Feb 24 : Ukrainian troops are fighting Russian forces for the control of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, 60 miles north of capital Kiev, amid fears that the battle could damage the storage facilities holding nuclear waste, sparking a fallout that could blanket Europe, Daily Mail reported.
Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior Affairs, said that Russian forces entered the zone and were ‘vigorously’ fighting with the border guards units.
“If storage facilities are destroyed, the radioactive cloud could cover Ukraine, Belarus and the EU,” Gerashchenko said, the report added.
Meanwhile, Turkey reported that one of its ships had been hit by a ‘bomb’ off the coast of Odessa, where fighting is going on. Turkey is a member of NATO, underlining fears that the war in Ukraine could quickly suck in other nations and spark an all-out conflict in Europe.
Elsewhere, Kiev ordered civilians to bomb shelters amid fears Russia is about to strike the Ukrainian capital as Kiev’s troops lost control of a key airfield around 15 miles away, Daily Mail reported.
Russian forces had attacked it with around two-dozen attack helicopters earlier in the day, four of which are thought to have been shot down.
“They are going to bomb Kiev now. Authorities told us to hide in shelters,” a source in the city told MailOnline as city authorities said a hospital had been hit, killing four people.
The Ukrainian army was this afternoon fighting in almost every region of the country, battling the Russians for control of military bases, airports, cities and ports from Kharkiv to Kiev, and Donetsk to Odessa.(IANS)