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At least 31 people have been confirmed dead and 48 remain unaccounted for after Russia dropped at least nine bombs on a school building in southeastern Ukraine where civilians had taken shelter, local governor Mykhailo Semikin said. CNN reported that the building in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was also being used to distribute humanitarian aid.
The people were sheltering in a recently built, EU-funded reinforced basement designed to withstand most strikes, Semikin said. The force of the bombs caused the concrete structure to collapse, and a fire broke out.
The shelter was built last year to allow classes to continue during the war. Many civilians have since left as fighting approached the village, and the building is no longer being used as a school. Local authorities now use it as an administrative centre and humanitarian hub.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky described the strike as “utterly horrific”. He said it came shortly before Russia launched another large 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.
“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,” he added.
The Monday strike is among the deadliest since the start of the war, as civilian deaths have mounted in recent months. Russia intensified aerial attacks on towns and cities across Ukraine over the summer, striking at all times of the day.
At least 33 people were killed last month when Russia struck two civilian buses in Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region. In August, 38 people died after a Russian drone strike on an ammunition depot near the capital triggered a large fire and multiple explosions that continued for hours in a residential area near Kyiv. A mass Russian missile attack on Kyiv in July killed 33 people across the city in a coordinated barrage.
The assault on Komyshuvakha followed a pattern in which Russian forces launch an initial wave of strikes, wait for emergency services to arrive and then attack again.
At least two first responders, identified locally as Denys Konovalenko and Oleksiy Sushchevsky, both 44, were killed after rushing to the site of the first strike.
Ukraine’s police said at least four of its officers were also killed. They were identified as Mykhailo Buzhenko and Mykola Balanda, who each had more than two decades of police service, and Mykhailo Romanov and Dmytro Besedin, both 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,” police said in a statement.
Semikin told Ukraine’s national television broadcaster 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.
