The Guardian's John Vidal reports that the "official" death figures resulting from the Chernobyl reactor accident in 1986 are likely grossly under-estimated. Doctors at hospitals in Belarus and Ukraine are seeing highly unusual rates of cancers, mutations and blood diseases in their young patients. An assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus - far higher than the ludicrous but "official" figures from the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency which claim only 56 people have died as a direct result of the radiation released by the Chernobyl explosion and that only about 4,000 will will die from it eventually.