KYIV (The Thursday Times) — At least 24 people were killed after Russian aerial bombs hit a school used to hand out humanitarian aid in the Ukrainian village of Komyshuvakha on Monday, Ukrainian officials said, as fighting resumed elsewhere after the longest truce of the war.
Ukraine’s emergency service gave the new toll, up from an earlier 18, and said rescuers and police officers were among the dead. Five people were injured and people were still under the rubble, said Mykhailo Semikin, the regional head in Zaporizhzhia. He said at least nine 3,000kg bombs hit the village, and that rescuers had to stop several times because of Russian drones.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “utterly horrific”. He said that after the first strike on the school, a second wave of nine bombs targeted the shelter where people had taken cover. “The Russians could not have been unaware that every week, local residents who had remained in Komyshuvakha received humanitarian aid at that very location,” he wrote.
“After the humanitarian operation in Oleshky, there was 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 said, calling for a “strong and tough response” from the world.
The truce that ended on Monday
The bombing came as a six-day ceasefire in the Kherson region ended. The truce around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, which both sides credited to mediation by US First Lady Melania Trump, was the longest since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022 and let hundreds of trapped civilians leave.
Local authorities in Kherson said on Monday morning that strikes had resumed, with Russia hitting a medical facility in the city centre and a drone injuring two people in a car. Ukraine’s General Staff accused Russian forces of using the pause to rotate units and bring in ammunition. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “reasonable to assume” that Ukraine had also used it to regroup.
Both countries’ human rights ombudsmen, who oversaw the truce together, called for it to be repeated elsewhere. Peskov ruled that out on Monday. “There are no similar plans or initiatives,” he said.
The attack followed a fake radiation alert that hit Kyiv when Ukraine’s air raid app was hacked.
