The death toll after the air strikes on the village of Komyshuvakha in Zaporizhzhia region has risen to 31, and nearly 50 people are considered missing. This was said by the acting head of the regional military administration, Mykhailo Semikin, in a television interview, as reported by the news agency Ukrinform. Five injured people are also in hospitals, Semikin said further.
According to Semikin, the Russian army carried out at least nine air strikes on the village on Monday, 2 November. The settlement was hit at exactly the moment when people were receiving humanitarian aid in a resilience centre. “They started with KAB-500 guided bombs and then used FAB-3000 bombs,” Semikin said according to Ukrinform. A FAB-3000 contains 1.5 tonnes of explosives and is designed to destroy heavily reinforced concrete bunkers. After a direct hit, the concrete structure inside the building collapsed and a fire broke out.
According to Semikin, the region has declared three days of mourning for the victims, from 3 to 5 November. It is one of the deadliest tragedies in the region since the start of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression.
First aid, then shelter – and a second attack
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the attack hit a school building where classes had long since stopped because of its proximity to the front line. The building and its shelter had been used for humanitarian work, and aid had been distributed there every Monday. The first attack hit people as they came to the distribution of relief supplies. They sought shelter, and then there was a second air strike directly on the shelter, Zelensky reported on the evening of 2 November, as the news outlet Glavnoe in Ukraine wrote. Most of the dead were civilians who had come to collect aid, as well as people who had rushed to help after the first impact.
According to earlier reports, the dead also include two employees of the State Emergency Service and four police officers. Rescue and search operations at the scene of the disaster are ongoing; repeated air-raid alarms and the danger of further attacks are hampering them.
Zelensky expected in Berlin
The attack coincides with a visit by Zelensky to Berlin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced in the morning that the Ukrainian president was expected in the capital this Tuesday, as tagesschau.de reports. Further details were not initially publicly known. According to the editorial team’s assessment, the background is likely to be planned talks at adviser level between Russia, Ukraine and the USA in Abu Dhabi, which US special envoy Steve Witkoff has announced; US envoys are also due to meet representatives from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, NATO and the EU this week. The USA, Russia and Ukraine last spoke in a trilateral format in February.
Zelensky accused Moscow of deliberate bombardment. “Russia could not have failed to notice that the residents remaining in Komyshuvakha receive humanitarian aid there every week,” he wrote on social media according to tagesschau.de, and spoke of a “sneaky terrorist attack”. “This is further proof that Russia does not want de-escalation.”
The reports on the extent of the destruction differ between the sources: tagesschau.de reports, citing Zelensky, that ten guided bombs hit the area, while Semikin speaks of at least nine air strikes according to Ukrinform. Semikin gave the number of missing people as 27 on Monday (S3), and on Tuesday he spoke of nearly 50 (S1).
In the night to Tuesday and in the morning, the authorities also reported attacks on energy infrastructure in several parts of the country. In Zhytomyr region, according to governor Vitalii Bunechko, more than 180,000 households were without electricity, affecting around 130 settlements. In Odesa region, according to the private energy supplier DTEK, emergency shutdowns occurred after a facility was severely damaged; according to tagesschau.de, Kyiv was also affected by emergency shutdowns. Russia confirmed the large-scale attacks on energy facilities, according to the news agency Interfax.
Earlier coverage: Death toll in Komyshuvakha school strike rises to 24
