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Fire near Ukraine’s Chernobyl NPP reaches border with Belarus

The distance from the fire edge to the border is some 50 meters, the situation is monitored by foresters, troops and rescuers in order not to let the fire spread to the Belarusian territory

© ANDREW KRAVCHENKO/EPA/TASS

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Chernobyl area fire poses risk to neighboring regions — Polish expert

MINSK, July 8. /TASS/. More than 30 rescuers, Mi-26 and Mi-8 helicopters and also special equipment are involved in an effort launched by Belarus to extinguish fire on the border with Ukraine, the country’s Emergencies Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

"As of this morning, the flame is split into four fire seats. Each of them covers the area of around 15 hectares. All of them have been contained," the ministry said, adding that the maximum fire area on Tuesday was some 120 hectares.

The ministry explained that the fire coming from Ukraine’s territory was stopped directly at the border with Belarus with the use of fire line plowing near the Glushkovichi border crossing, in the Gomel region.

"The distance from the fire edge to the border is some 50 meters," the ministry said. The situation is monitored by foresters, troops and rescuers "in order not to let the fire spread to the Belarusian territory."

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Ukraine’s emergencies service said the country’s firefighters are continuing putting out the peat fire on the territory of the Chernobyl Puscha, near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Dry grass and reeds caught in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl on June 29. The firefighters later managed to extinguish the blaze and the peat fire has been localized.

According to the Republican Center for Radiation Control and Environmental Monitoring in Minsk, Belarus, no increase in the radiation level on the territory of the republic has been registered after the fire in the Chernobyl Puscha, in the Kiev region.

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Ukraine Belarus Natural disasters Environment

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