Russian Bunker-Busting Bombs Kill 29 at Ukrainian Aid Site as 48 Remain Missing
The strike on a humanitarian aid facility in Zaporizhzhia region came as a wave of overnight attacks on power plants and hospitals coincided with U.S. Election Day.
The death toll from a Russian attack on a humanitarian aid site in southern Ukraine rose to 29 on Tuesday, with 48 people still missing, according to The Associated Press. Rescuers and volunteers kept searching the cratered ruins of the destroyed aid facility and shelter in Komyushuvakha, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, hoping to find survivors under the rubble. More bodies were pulled out and carried away in white plastic sheeting.
"The scale of the tragedy is terrifying," Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of the region's military administration, wrote in an online post. "This is one of the worst tragedies in terms of the number of civilian victims in our region since the start of the full-scale war." The dead include four police officers and two rescue workers, Semikin said. Authorities declared three days of mourning in Zaporizhzhia.
Monday's attack used Russian bunker-busting bombs filled with nearly 1.5 tons of explosives, the AP reported. At least five people were hurt in the strike on the site, where people had gathered to receive humanitarian aid.
The aid-site attack was part of a much larger barrage. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched 289 attack drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles across nine regions overnight, triggering emergency power cuts as the strikes targeted power plants across the country. Zelenskyy noted that the barrage coincided with the U.S. elections. "The Russians think America won't notice this signal of theirs," he said. "But we need to notice and stop such terror. We need to help Ukraine defend its skies; otherwise, Russia will never stop its missile strikes."
In the northeastern region of Kharkiv, a combined missile and drone attack wounded at least 62 people, local authorities said. A strike damaged a medical facility in the Nemyshlianskyi district and shattered windows in four apartment buildings. More than 200 patients were transferred to other hospitals, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the regional military administration.
In the Dnipro area, rescuers pulled a woman alive from the rubble Tuesday morning after an attack that killed one person and wounded 17, local officials said. Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said the strike damaged an outpatient clinic and a hospital, and patients were moved to other facilities.
The fighting is running in both directions. Russia's Defense Ministry said it shot down 856 Ukrainian drones overnight, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 493 drones were fired toward the Russian capital. A Ukrainian drone attack wounded two employees at an oil refinery in the Russian city of Yaroslavl, regional Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev said, and he reported damage to the refinery's infrastructure. Moscow-installed officials in Russian-occupied Crimea said rolling blackouts were put in place in the south, west and east of the peninsula after attacks on energy infrastructure.
