Russia bombs humanitarian hub in Ukraine, killing at least 31 people

Other overnight strikes targeted power plants across Ukraine, damaged hospitals and wounded scores of people

Russia has bombed a humanitarian hub in southern Ukraine, killing at least 31 people and leaving dozens missing, as part of a wave of strikes across the country.

Other overnight Russian strikes targeted power plants across Ukraine, damaged hospitals and wounded scores of people, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned that the US was distracted by its midterm elections.

In total, Russia had launched 289 attack drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles across nine regions, triggering emergency power cuts, Zelenskyy said in an online post.

“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,” he said.

The barrage came just a day after a rare local ceasefire in neighbouring Kherson ended, underscoring the limits of the temporary truce.

The deadliest guided-bomb attack first targeted a school building used to distribute humanitarian aid in Komyshuvakha, a village in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, and then took aim at a nearby shelter.

The dead included four police officers and two rescue workers, Mykhailo Semikin, the acting head of the regional military administration, said on Tuesday. At least five people were hurt. Semikin said 48 people were considered missing.

As night fell in Komyshuvakha, emergency responders used torches to search through the rubble of collapsed buildings, according to photos and video posted online by local officials.

Efforts to rescue people on Monday evening were hindered as Russian drones launched additional attacks in the area that had been bombed, according to Mykhailo Semikin, a military official in Zaporizhzhia.

Zelenskyy said the Russians could not have been unaware that residents remaining in Komyshuvakha gathered each week to pick up humanitarian packages from the site.

The attack, he said, had shown that Moscow was intent on killing people instead of building on the past week’s ceasefire in the embattled southern city of Oleshky, brokered by the US first lady, Melania Trump.

“Russians continue to demonstrate, time and again, their hatred of Ukraine and everything that exists here,” Zelenskyy said.

In the north-east region of Kharkiv, a combined Russian missile and drone attack had wounded at least 62 people, local authorities said. A strike damaged a medical facility in the Nemyshlianskyi district, shattered windows in four apartment buildings and damaged cars. More than 200 patients had been transferred to other medical facilities, said the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.

“If Russia genuinely ‌wanted de-escalation, there was an opportunity following the situation in Oleshky to continue taking humanitarian steps. We proposed this. But Russia continues to kill people,” Zelenskyy said.