A senior Russian official has called for the creation of a safety zone around Iran’s Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant to prevent a major disaster, two days after a projectile struck within several hundred metres of its reactor, Reuters reports.

Alexei Likhachev, head of state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said there were 72 tonnes of fissile material and 210 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel at the site, and that any strike on it could lead to a catastrophe.

“If an incident were to occur, it would be at least regional in scale and would affect a large number of countries in the Middle East. None of the parties to the conflict would avoid radiation exposure in the event of a serious accident at Bushehr,” Likhachev told reporters.