Strike on aid point at Zaporizhzhia school kills 26, Ukraine says, dimming peace hopes
Ukrainian officials said on Monday that a Russian strike on a village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed at least 26 people, including rescue workers who reached the site after a first blast, at a school where humanitarian aid was being distributed.
The acting regional governor, Mykhailo Semikin, said on Telegram that among the dead were two rescue workers and four police officers. The emergency service named the two rescuers as Denys Konovalenko and Oleksy Sushchevsky, both 44. "Every day, they went out to help people, working in dangerous conditions and risking their own lives to save others," it said in a statement.
Footage released by the Ukrainian emergency services showed the building reduced to piles of smouldering rubble, with rescuers working at the site. According to the accounts given by Ukrainian officials, the first strike came as people gathered for the weekly aid distribution, and a repeat strike then hit those who had taken shelter.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his daily address, said aid had been handed out at the school every Monday. "The Russians carried out the first strike just as people arrived. Then, there was a repeat strike, more aerial bombs, this time targeting the shelter," he said.
Schools and humanitarian relief points are protected under international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks on civilian objects. The casualty figures, typical of reports from front-line areas, could not be independently verified and often change as rescue work continues.
The attack came hours after the expiry of a six-day ceasefire in the neighbouring Kherson region — the longest pause in fighting since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The truce, which began on October 27 and ended on Sunday, was brokered with the involvement of US First Lady Melania Trump to allow an evacuation mission from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. Neither side reported violations during the pause.
Mr. Zelensky said that after the Oleshky operation "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. There must be a response to this," he said.
A senior Ukrainian official told the news agency AFP on Sunday that Russia had refused a Ukrainian proposal to extend the truce, and Kyiv's military alleged that Moscow had used the pause to fortify its positions. Asked about the allegation, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "This is a completely normal practice in such situations," adding that the Ukrainian army had also used earlier pauses in fighting to regroup.
Mr. Peskov described the Oleshky humanitarian mission as successful, praising "good cooperation between all sides" and the role of Russia's human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, who oversaw the ceasefire alongside her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Lubinets. It was one of the most substantial instances of Russian-Ukrainian cooperation since the war began, with evacuees taken to both Ukrainian-controlled territory and Moscow-annexed Crimea. The Kremlin said no further such missions were planned "at the moment".
Diplomatic efforts are due to continue. US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Monday that US-led talks between Russia and Ukraine would resume on November 10 and 11 in Abu Dhabi. President Donald Trump has pressed for a settlement to the war, now grinding through its fifth year, but no breakthrough has been achieved. Kyiv and its European allies have voiced concern that Washington has increasingly sided with Moscow.
Separately, both Russia and Ukraine said their emergency warning applications had been hacked in apparent cyberattacks overnight, hours after the truce ended.
The war, which began with Russia's invasion in February 2022, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.
