Russian forces on Monday bombed a school being used as an aid distribution point in a village in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, killing 26 people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the country’s emergency services said.
The emergency services said two members of a rescue crew and four police officers were among the dead in the village of Komyshuvakha. Five people were being treated in hospital, including two rescue workers.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Russian forces initially dropped aerial bombs on a school in the village, used as a shelter and for distributing humanitarian assistance every Monday.
There were no classes at the school, he said, as the village, lying southeast of the region’s main city, also called Zaporizhzhia, was too close to the front line in the 4-1/2-year-old war.
“The Russians struck first just as people were arriving – a few aerial bombs,” he said. “Then there was a second strike – more air bombs, this time on the shelter. A vile terrorist strike.”
Zelenskiy said the Russians could not have been unaware that residents remaining in Komyshuvakha gathered each week to pick up humanitarian packages.
ZELENSKIY: MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR HUMANITARIAN STEPS
The attack, he said, had shown that Moscow was intent on killing people instead of building on the past week’s humanitarian mission in the embattled southern city of Oleshky, brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump.
“Russians continue to demonstrate, time and again, their hatred of Ukraine and everything that exists here,” he said.
“If Russia genuinely wanted de-escalation, there was an opportunity following the situation in Oleshky to continue taking humanitarian steps. We proposed this. But Russia continues to kill people.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, citing the attack, urged countries to shun Russian participation in top-level sport following a ruling by sport’s highest court ordering the country’s reinstatement in major tournaments.
“Russia deserves condemnation, isolation, and consequences, not a return to international respectability,” Sybiha wrote on X. “Its crimes cannot be separated from its flag, its national teams, or its attempts to regain international legitimacy.”
Regina Kharchenko, secretary of the Zaporizhzhia City Council, said 27 people were missing in the attack.
Zaporizhzhia region police said officers and rescue teams were trying to reach residents believed to be trapped under rubble.
Photographs posted online showed smouldering rubble strewn throughout the area.
The attack occurred a day after the expiry of a six-day local ceasefire arranged to bring aid into Oleshky to the southwest in Kherson region and evacuate residents wishing to leave.
In Washington, a senior US official told
Reporters that the US will bring together delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi on November 10 to 11 to discuss moves toward ending the war, post-war security agreements and de-escalation.
US negotiators have been seeking a breakthrough before winter in the long-running conflict. The last US-mediated peace talks took place in February before the US and Israel launched a war against Iran.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar, )
