Zelenskyy says at least 26 killed in Russian strike on aid centre in Zaporizhzhia region

At least 26 people were killed on Monday when a school used as a humanitarian aid distribution point in the village of Komyshuvakha, in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, was hit in a Russian strike, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement ¹. Al Jazeera English also reported a toll of at least 26 dead in strikes on the school ⁴.

Several accounts on X described the attack as having more than one phase. A post by @UnbiasedHdlns said Russian aircraft first struck the school where aid was being distributed, and that nine more bombs then hit a shelter ². The account @visegrad24 described the weapons as glide bombs and said the death toll had risen to 26 over the course of the day ³. These details have not been independently confirmed.

A post by @UnknownNewsMan described the attack as a double-tap strike, in which a site is hit again after the initial blast. It said the dead included two rescuers and four police officers, and that five other people were injured ⁵. This breakdown of casualties comes from a single account and has not been confirmed by official Ukrainian emergency or police services.

Accounts of the death toll were consistent at 26 across the reports ¹³⁴⁵. Some later posts suggested the figure had climbed during the day as information came in ³. It is not clear whether the toll is final or whether people remain unaccounted for.

No response from Russia to the accusations was reported. Moscow has generally denied deliberately targeting civilians in the war, but there was no specific comment on the Komyshuvakha strike.

Several villages in Ukraine share the name Komyshuvakha. The one described in these reports lies in Zaporizhzhia region, near Zaporizhzhia city, according to @visegrad24 ³. Front-line settlements in the region have regularly come under fire during the war.

The reported strike came amid continued long-range attacks by both sides. Later on Monday, a large Russian drone and missile attack targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure was reported, including at the Ladyzhyn thermal power plant in Vinnytsia region. Ukrainian drones were reported to have struck oil refineries in Russia's Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions overnight.

Key details remain unverified. They include the exact number and type of bombs used, the sequence of the strikes and the breakdown of victims between civilians and emergency workers. Independent casualty figures from bodies such as the United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine were not yet available.