Kyiv, 4 September 2024 (dpa/MIA) — A forest fire has broken out in the radioactively contaminated exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, officials said on Wednesday.

An area of around 20 hectares is on fire, the governor of the Kiev region, Ruslan Kravchenko, said on Facebook.

However, background radiation levels were within the norm, he added.

More than 200 firefighters, including 50 soldiers, have been deployed to battle the flames, according to the administration of the restricted zone.

They have already succeeded in containing the fire, it said.

The cause of the fire was initially unclear, but the northern Ukrainian region of Kiev has been seeing high temperatures and prolonged drought this summer, increasing the risk of forest fires.

The April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union sent radioactive fallout into the air over Europe in what was the largest nuclear accident in history.

Due to the radioactive radiation, an exclusion zone within a radius of around 30 kilometres was established around the accident site.

Tens of thousands of people were relocated at the time.

During their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian troops nevertheless used the largely deserted restricted area along the Belarusian border to advance on the Ukrainian capital Kiev, which is just over 80 kilometres from the border.

Since the withdrawal of Russian forces in April that year, Ukraine has kept the border area with Russia's ally Belarus under special military control.