The pinnacle of the U.N.’s atomic company warned on Saturday in regards to the “very actual danger of a nuclear catastrophe” on account of the shelling on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant in Ukraine.

Ukraine and Russia blamed one another for the bombing on Friday at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, with either side calling it an act of terror.

“I’m extraordinarily involved by the shelling yesterday at Europe’s largest nuclear energy plant, which underlines the very actual danger of a nuclear catastrophe that might threaten public well being and the surroundings in Ukraine and past,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the top of the U.N.’s Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company, mentioned in a assertion on Saturday.

“Any navy firepower directed at or from the power would quantity to enjoying with fireplace, with doubtlessly catastrophic penalties,” Grossi added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned Russian forces fired twice on the facility. The assault amounted to “an open, brazen crime, an act of terror,” he mentioned.

Russia’s Ministry of Protection blamed Kyiv for 3 artillery strikes hitting the realm of the plant, calling them “acts of nuclear terrorism.”

“In line with Ukraine, there was no injury to the reactors themselves and no radiological launch,” Grossi mentioned. “Nonetheless, there may be injury elsewhere on the location.”

Grossi reiterated his name for a group of IAEA consultants to have the ability to go to the Zaporizhzhia web site, to offer “neutral and unbiased details about the standing” of the power.

“The Ukrainian workers working the plant underneath Russian occupation should have the ability to perform their vital duties with out threats or strain undermining not solely their very own security but additionally that of the power itself,” Grossi mentioned.

Ukrainian Vitality Minister German Galushchenko has rejected a possible IAEA go to to the plant so long as it’s nonetheless underneath Russian management, because it has been since March.

Day-to-day operations of the power stay within the arms of Ukrainian staff, whereas workers from Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear operator, are also on web site.