Russia has dropped at least nine bombs on a school building in an evacuation center in southeastern Ukraine, killing dozens of people, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Tuesday in what he called “one of the deadliest attacks of this war.”
At least 40 people are confirmed dead and more than 30 are still missing after an attack on a building in Komishvakha, Zaporizhzhya region, which local governor Mykhailo Semikin said was being used as a shelter and humanitarian aid distribution center.
Monday’s attack caused extensive damage, and recovery efforts are still continuing two days later.
Semikin said the victims were in a newly built reinforced basement, funded by the European Union and designed to withstand most attacks, but the bomb’s enormous power caused the concrete structure to collapse and start a fire.
The scale of the damage complicates recovery efforts. Local authorities said as of midday Wednesday only some of the bodies recovered from the rubble had been identified, and further identification would likely require DNA testing.
The shelter was built last year to continue classes during the war, but as the fighting approached the village many civilians were evacuated and it is no longer used as a school. Instead, the local government uses it as an administrative center and humanitarian hub.
The United Nations Human Rights Observatory in Ukraine stressed that the attack occurred just as civilians in the region were gathering to receive humanitarian aid.
“The timing and location of the humanitarian distribution was widely publicized,” said mission director Daniel Bell.
“Either the Russian military knew that a humanitarian distribution was taking place or they failed to take the most basic steps to find out what was going on in the village they were planning to attack. In either case, this attack appears to violate the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
Zelenskiy 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 repeated calls by US President Donald Trump for an energy ceasefire.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denis Shmyhal said the three drones were aimed at a substation critical to the operation of the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant. He wrote on Telegram that such actions threatened the nuclear security of Europe as a whole and that Ukraine had notified the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.
“It is very telling that all this is happening on the day of the US Congressional elections. The Russians believe that the United States will not notice this signal from Russia. But such terrorism must be noticed and stopped,” President Zelenskiy said on Tuesday morning.
Zelenskiy added: “We need help to protect Ukraine’s skies. Otherwise Russia will never stop its missile attacks. It is essential to support peacebuilding honestly and reliably, and the United States can do it.”
The latest Russian attack comes amid a renewed push for negotiations by the Trump administration. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff recently met with Mr. Zelensky in Norway and then flew to St. Petersburg to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Separately, First Lady Melania Trump helped secure a ceasefire in the occupied Ukrainian city of Oreshkiy, allowing the evacuation of hundreds of civilians over the weekend. Trump’s office announced Tuesday that the first lady will gather representatives from Russia and Ukraine at the White House on Thursday, calling it a “special moment in American history.”
Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region comes under heavy Russian bomb attack
Yesterday, a Russian bomb attack killed at least 33 people in a Ukrainian village near the front lines in the Zaporizhzhya region. CNN’s Claire Sebastian reports.
Monday’s attack was the deadliest death toll since the start of the war, but recent months have been an unprecedented bloodbath for Ukrainian civilians.
Russia intensified its air raids on towns and cities across the country during the summer, conducting attacks at all hours of the day.
Last month, Russia attacked two civilian buses in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, killing at least 33 people. In August, a Russian drone attacked an ammunition depot near the capital, causing a massive fire that lasted several hours and multiple explosions in a residential area near Kiev, killing 38 people. In July, Russia launched a large-scale missile attack on Kiev, killing 33 people across the city.
Monday’s attack on Komisvaka followed a well-known scenario in which Russian forces launch a first wave of attacks, wait for the arrival of emergency services, and then attack again.
At least two first responders, locally named Denis Konovalenko and Oleksiy Sushchevsky, both 44, died after rushing to the scene of the pre-emptive attack.
Ukrainian police said at least four officers were also killed in the attack. Their names are Mykhailo Buzhenko and Mykola Baranda, both of whom have been working as police officers for more than 20 years, and Mykhailo Romanov and Dmytro Besedin have both been regional police officers for more than 10 years.
“(They) were helping local residents evacuate to an underground school. A dangerous follow-up attack trapped everyone who was trying to escape,” police said in a statement.
Semikin told Ukrainian state television on Tuesday that Russia used KAB-500 and FAB-3000 bombs in the attack.
“To put this in perspective, this is a three-ton aerial bomb containing about 1.5 tons of explosives. Such weapons are primarily designed to destroy heavy concrete fortifications and bunkers,” he said.
