Forty years ago, in April 1986, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was the worst nuclear accident in history. Then the plant was in the USSR, it is part of northern Ukraine now.

Residents of the region continue to battle health and environmental issues from the April 26, 1986, disaster as conflict rages around them.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has paid tribute to the “extraordinary courage and resilience” of all those who have endured the legacy of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion which occurred 40 years ago on Sunday. Martin said that the continuing war in Ukraine reminds us “that the struggle for dignity, safety and hope is far from over”.

Photographs from the first days of the Chernobyl disaster and of the aftermath years later show the response, the evacuation and the long-term consequences of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Efrem Lukatsky, a Kyiv-based photographer for The Associated Press, was living in the city on April 26, 1986, when the explosion and fire struck the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a two-hour drive away.

Bleak landscapes, soldiers in gas masks and mutant creatures running through the Red Forest. Basically, a perfect place for you to spend a month. Welcome to Chernobyl. How would this make you have something in common with the astronauts on the ISS?

"Dogs at Chernobyl are now genetically distinct … thanks to years of exposure to ionizing radiation, study finds."