Moscow: Russian authorities on Tuesday announced the evacuation of the village nearest to the site of a nuclear accident in northern Russia, suggesting dangers graver than initially reported.

People gather for the funerals of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by a rocket explosion in Sarov, the closed city, located 370 kilometres east of Moscow. Credit:AP

The still-mysterious incident last week killed seven people and released radiation, apparently when a small nuclear reactor malfunctioned during a test of a novel type of missile near a naval weapons testing site.

Russian officials have released a flurry of misleading or incomplete statements downplaying the severity of the accident, which the military first reported on Thursday as a fire involving a liquid-fuelled rocket engine. It was not until Sunday that Russian scientists conceded a reactor had released radiation during a test on an offshore platform in the White Sea. The number of dead has grown from two to five and seven.

That pattern of murkiness continued on Tuesday, as news reports and official statements offered only the vaguest explanation for the evacuation and hours later indicated it had been called off.