Fighting raged on Saturday near a sprawling nuclear power plant in the south of Ukraine, despite warnings from nuclear safety watchdogs earlier this week that conditions there were posing risks and “out of control”.

The Russian military has been using the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest, as a base to assault the Ukrainian-controlled town of Nikopol across the river.

On Saturday it fired a volley of Grad rockets that damaged 11 apartment buildings and 36 privately owned houses, and wounded three people, the Ukrainian military said. The assault also knocked out electricity, water and natural gas supplies in the town, where residents have been fleeing from the artillery attacks and attendant risk of radiation, the Ukrainian military said.

Russian forces began staging artillery attacks on the plant about a month ago, and the Ukrainian military has said it cannot shoot back because of concerns that it would hit a reactor at the plant, igniting a radiation catastrophe.

Ukraine has also accused the Russians of setting off explosions at the plant intended to unnerve European allies about nuclear safety and discourage arming Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia plant occupies a perilous spot on the broad Dnipro river, along the frontline of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Army controls the west bank, while the Russians are entrenched around the plant on the river’s east bank. The battles near the nuclear plant came as clashes continued elsewhere in Ukraine, including Russian artillery and tank assaults on the eastern town of Bakhmut, the site of some of the fiercest fighting along the front in recent days.

The Ukrainian military continued striking targets far behind Russia’s front lines, hoping to whittle away at ammunition and fuel supplies. American-provided HIMARS rockets have helped shift the tide in the war, and on Friday Ukraine hit three command posts and six ammunition depots at various positions behind enemy lines along the front, it said in a statement.

Outrage over nuclear safety violations — Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday that “every principle of nuclear safety has been violated” — has done nothing to dislodge the Russian army from the site, and fighting has continued daily, with explosions in the early afternoon on Friday. Grossi called conditions at the plant “out of control”.

Grossi said he was far more worried about Zaporizhzhia than he was about Chornobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, also in Ukraine, that radiated the surrounding area and imperilled Europe. “Chernobyl, I think we are fine,’‘ said Grossi.

New York Times News Service