KYIV, Ukraine — Russian aerial bombs hit a school used to hand out humanitarian aid in the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region on Monday, killing 24 people, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first put the toll at 18 dead and five injured in a post on X. The emergency service later raised the confirmed toll to 24 and said two rescue workers and four police officers were among those killed, according to the BBC.
Zelenskyy said the settlement had been hit several times since morning. The first strike hit the school, where residents who had stayed in Komyshuvakha were receiving aid, he wrote.
“After the first aerial bomb strike, there was a double-tap strike with nine more bombs, specifically targeting the shelter where people were taking cover,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Search goes on under drone threat
Regional head Mykhailo Semikin said at least nine aerial bombs, each weighing 3,000 kilograms, hit the village, the BBC reported. Five people were injured and 27 were reported missing, and Semikin said people were still under the rubble.
Rescue teams were working at the scene but had to stop again and again because of Russian drone attacks in the area, Semikin said, according to the BBC. Zelenskyy posted a video showing a large crater and rescue crews picking through the debris.
“The Russians could not have been unaware that every week, local residents who had remained in Komyshuvakha received humanitarian aid at that very location.”
Attack follows Oleshky ceasefire expiry
The bombing came a day after a six-day local ceasefire brokered by U.S. first lady Melania Trump expired, Reuters reported. The truce had allowed aid to reach the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in the Kherson region and residents to leave.
Zelenskyy said the Oleshky operation had opened a moment when the next steps could have shown that progress toward peace was possible. “With these killings, Russia is sending an entirely opposite signal: Russia is counting on more killings,” he wrote.
The emergency service named two of the dead rescuers as Denis Konovalenko and Oleksiy Sushchevsky, according to UNITED24 Media, which said two other rescue workers were among the five wounded.
Russia’s military had not publicly commented on the attack, the BBC reported. Virginia Times could not independently verify the casualty figures or the account of the strikes.
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