The death toll after the Russian air strike on the village of Komyshuvacha in the Zaporizhzhia region has risen to 40. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this on Facebook on Wednesday, as the news agency Ukrinform reports. At the same time, Zelensky said that more than 30 people could still be under the rubble. Some of the recovered bodies have not yet been identified.
According to him, the rescue work at the destroyed school has been ongoing for three days. All emergency services are involved, including, according to the State Emergency Service (DSNS), search dog teams and specialists from the state mountain rescue service, as the Kyiv Independent reports. The search is being hampered by the constant danger of further Russian attacks, Zelensky said.
Nine aerial bombs on a shelter
According to the Ukrainian side, Russian troops attacked Komyshuvacha with aerial bombs on Monday, 2 November. A school building that served as a distribution point for humanitarian aid was hit. After the first impact, nine more aerial bombs fell on a shelter where people had sought refuge, Zelensky said. The Kyiv Independent, citing the president, names the FAB-3000 type with a weight of three tonnes; the bomb contains more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives and has an effective radius of up to 250 metres.
According to the DSNS, two rescue workers are also among the dead: Denys Konovalenko and Oleksii Suschevskyi, both 44 years old. According to the report, the emergency workers and police officers were already on site when the danger of another attack arose. They took cover, whereupon Russian forces shelled the same area again. According to the DSNS, a gymnasium, an outbuilding and a fire engine were destroyed; the school building was damaged.
The governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Mykhailo Semikin, said according to the Kyiv Independent: “The scale of the tragedy is terrible. Behind every number is a human life, a family that has lost relatives or is still waiting for news.” A three-day period of mourning is in force in the region because of the attack, from 3 to 5 November. According to the Kyiv Independent’s assessment, this is one of the most costly tragedies in the region since the start of Russia’s war of aggression.
Zelensky laments weak international response
Zelensky criticised what he sees as the world’s weak response to the attack. “Unfortunately, there was very little reaction from the world to this insane attack,” he said, according to Ukrinform.
According to the Kyiv Independent, Komyshuvacha lies around 20 kilometres from the front line and has been considered a frontline location since November 2025. Russia repeatedly uses glide bombs there, which can be dropped from a great distance equipped with wing kits and thus remain out of range of air defence.
On Tuesday, 3 November, the Ukrainian side had initially reported at least 26 dead, and the regional military administrator Semikin also spoke of 27 missing persons, as tagesschau.de reported. These figures are now out of date. The rescue work in Komyshuvacha continues.
Earlier coverage: Air strike on Komyshuvakha: 31 dead, nearly 50 missing
