Death toll rises to 50 in Russian strike on Ukrainian aid point
Kyiv's emergency service says 50 civilians died when a Russian airstrike hit an aid distribution point in Komyshuvakha, as rescue work enters its fifth day.
By Henrik LindqvistEurope correspondent 1 min read
Komyshuvakha — The death toll from a Russian airstrike on an aid distribution point in southeastern Ukraine has risen to 50, France 24 reported on Friday, citing Kyiv's state emergency services. The figure makes the strike on the village of Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in more than four-and-a-half years of war.
Kyiv says Russia bombed a former school building in the frontline village on Monday, November 2, as civilians gathered for weekly humanitarian aid distributions. Emergency services said eight more bodies were pulled from the rubble during search operations that were still under way four days after the attack. Mykhailo Semikin, writing on Telegram, said search and rescue work at the site had entered its fifth day.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow hit an underground shelter with people inside. The UN's human rights mission in Ukraine said this week that the strike likely violated international law. Russia has not been quoted responding to the specific allegations in the reporting available so far, and the details of the attack rest on Ukrainian officials' accounts.
"The death toll from the Russian airstrike on the settlement of Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia region, on November 2 has risen to 50," Ukraine's state emergency services said.
The strike came days after the longest ceasefire between the two sides, in the southern Kherson region, came to an end. Russia's full-scale invasion has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, and strikes on aid sites have recurred throughout the conflict; an earlier wave of attacks on Ukrainian aid locations also drew heavy civilian casualties.
The next marker on the calendar is diplomatic rather than military. Ukraine-Russia talks under US mediation are due to restart in Abu Dhabi next week. Whether the Komyshuvakha toll, still liable to rise as crews work through the debris, changes anything at that table is the open question.
Sources
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