The Komyshuvakha strike on a school used as an aid point and a nearby shelter killed 26 people in southern Ukraine on Monday, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian forces first dropped aerial bombs on the school as people arrived. Then a second wave hit the shelter next to it. He called the attack “a vile terrorist strike”.
What happened in the Komyshuvakha strike
The village lies in the Zaporizhzhia region, southeast of the main city, and sits close to the front line. The school held no classes. Instead, residents gathered there every Monday to collect humanitarian packages and to shelter.
Zelensky said Moscow could not have missed that routine. According to the emergency services, the dead included four police officers and two members of a rescue crew. Five people received treatment in hospital, two of them rescuers.
Officials said about 20 people were missing, while the secretary of the Zaporizhzhia city council, Regina Kharchenko, put the number at 27. Pictures online showed debris smouldering across the village.
Rescue work after the Komyshuvakha strike
As night fell, rescuers searched the collapsed buildings with flashlights. However, Russian drones launched fresh attacks over the same area, and that slowed the effort, according to military official Mykhailo Semikin.
Local officials warned that the Komyshuvakha strike could still push the death toll higher. Police teams also tried to reach residents they believed lay under the rubble.
Elsewhere, Russian drones injured at least 17 people. In Kharkiv, drones hurt 12 people and damaged homes, greenhouses and a cold-storage facility. Odesa reported five injured after a warehouse and houses came under attack.
A truce ends and diplomacy looms
The attack came a day after a six-day local ceasefire ended in the Kherson region. That pause began on October 27. It let aid and evacuation teams reach the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. No truce between the two capitals had mattered more since the full-scale invasion started almost five years ago.
Zelensky said the Oleshky mission, brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump, offered a chance for more humanitarian steps. “This is further proof that Russia wants no de-escalation,” he said. Ukraine proposed more such steps, he added, but Russia kept killing people.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces used the pause to strengthen drone defences and restock ammunition. Zelensky also expected Moscow to escalate while Ukraine faces a shortage of missiles for air defence.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha cited the attack as he urged countries to keep Russia out of top-level sport. A ruling by the sport’s highest court had ordered the country back into major tournaments. He said Russia deserves condemnation, isolation and consequences.
Talks planned in Abu Dhabi
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, said Washington will bring Russian and Ukrainian delegations to Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11. Delegates will discuss postwar security, an easing of the fighting and humanitarian steps.
Last month Moscow agreed to return to trilateral talks with Washington and Kyiv. They would be the first round since February. In addition, US mediators will meet representatives of the European Union, NATO, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in Brussels this week. They plan to cover security guarantees for Ukraine and help with reconstruction.
For now, the Komyshuvakha strike has raised the humanitarian stakes just before those talks, and rescue crews continue to search for the missing.
