Strike on Iran's Bushehr plant could cause Chernobyl-style catastrophe, Russia warns

A strike on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant could lead to a Chernobyl-style catastrophe, the head of Russia's nuclear energy corporation warned on Thursday.

Earlier, an Israeli military spokesperson said Israel had struck Bushehr, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this. He said he could neither confirm nor deny that the Bushehr site on the coast of the Gulf had been hit.

Bushehr is Iran's only operating nuclear power plant and was built by Russia.

The head of Russia's state corporation Rosatom said the situation around the plant was fraught with risk.

"If there is a strike on the operational first power unit, it will be a catastrophe comparable to Chernobyl," the state RIA news agency cited Alexei Likhachev as saying.

Likhachev was referring to the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when a reactor exploded at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine. U.N. agencies have estimated a death toll of some 4,000 people as a result of radiation exposure from the disaster.

President Vladimir Putin told journalists in the early hours of Thursday that Israel had promised Russia that Moscow's workers - who are building more nuclear facilities at the Bushehr site - would be safe.

Russia has evacuated some of its specialists from Bushehr, Likhachev said, but the core workforce - which Putin said numbered hundreds of people - remained on site.