Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces carried out repeated air strikes on Monday on the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, hitting a school that was being used to deliver humanitarian aid. According to Interia Wydarzenia, 18 people were killed and five were wounded in the attack.
Zelensky described the strike as "absolutely terrifying" and said the settlement was bombed from the air several times, Interia Wydarzenia reports. He said a second wave of nine bombs was dropped specifically on a shelter where people had gone to take cover after the first raid.
Rescue work was still under way at the site, with searches continuing for further casualties. Ukraine's armed forces, emergency services and special services were all involved in the operation, and Zelensky said the work was extremely difficult.
Why it matters
The attack stands out for how it unfolded. According to Zelensky's account, the school was struck, and then the place where people fled for safety was struck again — a pattern that turns a first hit into a trap for survivors and rescuers. That detail is central to how Ukrainian officials are framing the strike.
It also matters because of where the school was being used. The building was a distribution point for humanitarian aid, meaning civilians were there to receive assistance rather than for any military purpose, according to the account relayed by Interia Wydarzenia. Strikes on civilian infrastructure and on aid operations have been a recurring point of international concern over the course of the war.
The casualty count — 18 dead and five injured — makes this one of the deadlier single incidents reported in the Zaporizhzhia region in recent months. The figures came from Zelensky and were reported by Interia Wydarzenia; they had not been independently verified at the time of the report, and the rescue operation was still in progress, so the toll could change.
What Zelensky said about the sequence of strikes
The president's account, as carried by Interia Wydarzenia, sets out a two-stage attack. The first raid hit the village and the school. After that, nine more bombs were directed at the shelter where residents had sought refuge. Zelensky said the second wave was aimed specifically at that shelter.
He also stressed the difficulty of the response. With the site hit more than once, emergency crews, military personnel and special services were working in conditions he described as extremely hard. The report did not give a figure for how many people remained unaccounted for, and it did not specify the type of aircraft or munitions involved.
Interia Wydarzenia also reported that Zelensky called for a response to the attack, without giving further detail on what form he said that response should take.
A village, a school, and an aid point
Komyshuvakha is a settlement in the Zaporizhzhia region, an area that has seen sustained fighting and repeated strikes through the war. The school that was hit had been repurposed for humanitarian work — a common arrangement in frontline areas, where public buildings often become the most solid structures available for distributing supplies and sheltering residents.
That dual role is what makes the location significant. A school used for aid distribution is, by definition, a place where civilians gather in numbers. The report from Interia Wydarzenia does not say how many people were in the building or near it at the time of the strikes, nor how many of those killed were civilians receiving aid, aid workers, or local residents who had taken cover there.
The five wounded were reported alongside the 18 dead. The report did not describe the severity of their injuries or say where they were being treated.
The wider pattern
Monday's strikes came as Russia's air campaign against Ukrainian towns and villages continued. Reports of attacks on civilian sites — schools, markets, medical facilities and aid points — have been a persistent feature of the conflict, and Ukrainian officials routinely publicise such strikes to press allies for additional air defence and to argue for tougher measures against Moscow.
Zaporizhzhia region, which includes Europe's largest nuclear power plant, has been a focus of military activity and shelling for much of the war. The report from Interia Wydarzenia did not indicate whether the strikes on Komyshuvakha were connected to fighting along the front line in the region, and no claim of responsibility beyond Zelensky's attribution to Russian forces was included in the material.
The report also did not include any comment from Russian authorities, and it did not state whether the site had any military significance according to Moscow's account. Independent confirmation of the sequence of strikes and the casualty figures was not available in the material reviewed.
What to watch
The immediate focus is the rescue operation in Komyshuvakha, where crews were still searching for people in the rubble on Monday evening and the death toll could rise. Beyond that, watch for updated casualty figures from Ukrainian authorities, any satellite or open-source verification of the two-stage strike, and whether the attack prompts a response from Ukraine's partners — Zelensky has already said a response is needed.
