Dozens of people were killed when Russia dropped at least nine bombs on a school building in southeastern Ukraine where they had taken shelter.
At least 31 people have been confirmed dead and another 48 are still unaccounted for after the attack on the building in Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, which was being used as a shelter and a humanitarian aid distribution center, local governor Mykhailo Semikin said.
They were in a newly-built, EU-funded reinforced basement designed to withstand most strikes, Semikin said, but the massive force of the bombs caused the concrete structure to collapse and a fire broke out.
The shelter was built last year in an effort to keep classes going during wartime, but many civilians have since left as the fighting got closer to the village, and it is not currently used as a school. Instead, local authorities are using it as an administrative center and humanitarian hub.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky described the strike as “utterly horrific.”
He said the shelter was attacked on Monday during the time when humanitarian aid was being distributed.
He said the attack came just before Russia launched another massive barrage of hundreds of drones and dozens of powerful cruise and ballistic missiles targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for energy ceasefire.
“It is very telling that all of this is happening on the day of the US congressional elections. The Russians believe that America will not notice this signal from them. But such terror must be noticed and stopped,” Zelensky said on Tuesday morning.
“Ukraine must be helped to defend its skies, otherwise Russia will never stop its missile strikes. It is essential to help build peace honestly and reliably, and America can do that,” Zelensky added.
Double-tap strike
The strike on Monday is among the deadliest since the start of the war, but the past few months have been exceptionally bloody for Ukrainian civilians.
Russia ramped up its aerial attacks on towns and cities across the country over the summer, striking at all times of the day.
At least 33 people were killed last month when Russia hit two civilian buses in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region. In August, 38 people were killed when a Russian drone strike on an ammunition depot near the capital triggered a large fire and multiple explosions that lasted hours in a residential area near Kyiv. And a mass Russian missile attack on Kyiv in July killed 33 people across the city in a coordinated barrage.
Rescuers carry the body of a person killed by the Russian airstrike in the frontline town of Komyshuvakha.
State Emergency Service/Reuters
The assault against Komyshuvakha on Monday followed a familiar scenario in which Russian forces launch the first wave of strikes, wait for emergency services to arrive and then strike again.
At least two first responders, named locally as Denys Konovalenko and Oleksiy Sushchevsky, both 44, were killed after rushing to the scene of the first strike.
The Ukrainian Police said at least four of its officers have also been killed in the attack. They were named as Mykhailo Buzhenko and Mykola Balanda, both of who had more than two decades of police service under their belts, and Mykhailo Romanov and Dmytro Besedin, both of whom have been community police officers for more than a decade.
“(They) were helping local residents take shelter in an underground school. A treacherous follow-up strike trapped everyone who was trying to escape,” the police said in a statement.
Semikin told Ukraine’s national TV broadcast on Tuesday that Russia used KAB-500 and FAB-3000 bombs in the attack.
“To put this into perspective, this is a three-ton aerial bomb containing nearly 1.5 tons of explosive material; such weapons are primarily designed to destroy heavy concrete fortifications and bunkers,” he said.
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