VIENNA: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday that its team at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) heard explosions and saw smoke coming from a nearby location.

The nuclear plant said one of its auxiliary facilities was attacked today, IAEA said in a statement.

“The auxiliary facility is located 1,200 metres from the ZNPP’s site perimeter, and the IAEA team could still see smoke from that direction in the afternoon,” the nuclear watchdog said.

Earlier, the administration of the Russia-held plant said a fire that broke out after Ukrainian shelling has been brought under control.

Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in the first weeks of February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Both sides have accused each other of firing or taking other actions that could trigger a nuclear accident.

Drone strikes kill three people in Russia

The plant’s administration said on Telegram that a civilian had been killed in the shelling, but that no plant employees or members of the emergency services had been injured.

Drone strikes

Ukrainian drone strikes killed three people and wounded two others overnight in western Russia, regional governors said on Saturday.

One woman was killed and two other people were wounded in an attack on an enterprise in Penza, the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko, wrote on Telegram.

An elderly man was killed inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram.

In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site’s buildings, acting Rostov governor Yuri Sliusar said.

“The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,” destroying drones over seven districts, Sliusar posted on Telegram.

Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems had destroyed 112 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory — 34 over the Rostov region — in a nearly nine-hour period, from Friday night to Saturday morning.

In Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, overnight Russian drone attacks left three people wounded, governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he said.

Russian forces have claimed advances in Dnipropetrovsk, recently announcing the capture of two villages there, part of Moscow’s accelerated capture of territory in July, according to an analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Kyiv denies any Russian presence in the Dnipropetrovsk area.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire in the more than three-year conflict, said that he wanted peace but that his demands for ending Moscow’s military offensive were “unchanged”.

Those demands include that Ukraine abandon territory and end ambitions to join Nato. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said only Putin could end the war and renewed his call for a meeting between the two leaders.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2025