Photo: National Police of Ukraine / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
At least 26 people were killed on Monday, November 2, when Russian aircraft bombed a school that was being used to hand out humanitarian aid in the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian officials said. Five people were injured, and the regional administration said 27 others were still missing as rescuers searched the rubble late into the night.
A second strike on the shelter
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the village had been hit by aerial bombs several times from the morning onwards. According to his account, the first strike hit the school, where residents who had stayed on in the front-line village collected aid every week. Russian forces then dropped nine more bombs on the shelter where people had gone to take cover.
Mykhailo Semikin, who heads the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said the village centre was struck with at least nine FAB-3000 guided bombs, each weighing around 3,000 kg. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said two of its rescuers and four police officers were among the dead. It said emergency crews who arrived after the first strike had moved into the shelter as the threat of another attack grew, and that the follow-up strike destroyed a sports hall, an outbuilding and a fire engine and damaged the school.
This is yet another proof that Russia does not want any de-escalation.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
Zelensky first put the toll at 18. The emergency service later raised it to 24, and in his evening video address the president said 26 people were known to have died. Officials said repeated Russian drone attacks and thick smoke inside the collapsed building forced rescuers to pause the search several times. Russia’s military has not commented publicly on the strike.
A village on the front line
Komyshuvakha lies about 20 km from the front line and has faced repeated guided-bomb attacks for the past year. Classes at the school had stopped long ago, and the building had instead become a weekly distribution point for the residents who remained. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said there was no doubt that Russian forces knew local people gathered there for aid.
A day of mourning has been declared across the Zaporizhzhia region for Tuesday, November 3.
Why it matters
The attack came just after a short, US-brokered ceasefire around the Russian-occupied southern city of Oleshky, in the Kherson region, came to an end. That pause, arranged with the involvement of US First Lady Melania Trump, allowed a rare joint Russian-Ukrainian operation to evacuate civilians. Zelensky said that moment had suggested peace might be possible, but that killings like this one sent the opposite signal.
What happens next
Negotiating teams from Ukraine, Russia and the United States are expected to resume peace talks in the coming days, most likely in Abu Dhabi, after negotiations were suspended in February. Moscow has stepped up its air attacks in recent months as Ukraine has run short of Western-supplied interceptors, and no major breakthrough is expected. Rescue work in Komyshuvakha was continuing, and officials warned the death toll could rise as the search for the missing goes on.
