Chernobyl wildfire covers Ukrainian capital of Kiev in thick smog

Smoke from a wildfire that has been raging for several days in the Chernobyl exclusion zone has covered the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, making its air pollution among the worst in the world, it was reported. According to Swiss monitoring group IQAir, the city’s air pollution was the worst in the world at one point in time on Thursday due to the wildfire smoke, the BBC said in a report on Friday. Firefighters have been tackling the wildfire for more than a week, and there was a new flare-up fanned by strong winds on Thursday. But the country’s Health Ministry has said that the radiation level remains normal and the abandoned nuclear plant faces no immediate threat. While forest fires are common in the exclusion zone, Greenpeace Russia said that the blaze was the worst since the April 1986 nuclear explosion in the fourth reactor of the plant, which polluted a large swathe of Europe, the Metro newspaper reported. (IANS)

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