Bunker-buster bombs hit a village aid queue
Residents of Komyshuvakha, a village in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region, were gathering for their weekly humanitarian aid distribution on Monday when the bombs arrived. Local authorities said nine aerial bombs, each weighing about 3,000kg, struck the area. The aid point was a former school building, and people ran for an underground shelter as the attack began. The roof of that shelter collapsed, trapping many of them under concrete.
By Tuesday the death toll at the site had passed 30, and rescue teams were still searching the rubble. Regional head Mykhailo Semikin said the scale of the tragedy was hard to comprehend. Four police officers and two emergency workers who rushed to help were among the dead. Roughly 50 people were listed as missing. Zaporizhzhia declared three days of mourning.
Hospitals and power stations in the same wave
The strike on the aid queue was part of a wider barrage. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched 289 attack drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles in one night, hitting targets in nine regions. A missile damaged a hospital in Kharkiv and injured more than 70 people. Residential buildings were hit in Dnipro.
The energy grid took direct hits. Three thermal power plants operated by DTEK stopped generating, and emergency power cuts followed in Kyiv and several other regions. Engineers worked through Tuesday to restore supply as temperatures fall.
Talks in Abu Dhabi and a hardening mood in Europe
Zelensky noted that the barrage landed on the day Americans voted in their midterm elections, a moment when Washington's attention was elsewhere. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Moscow to engage seriously in negotiations. Diplomats are due to meet in Abu Dhabi for further talks, but the Kremlins position has not softened in public.
The attack also renewed questions about air defence coverage in frontline regions. Ukrainian officials say interceptor stocks are thin, especially for ballistic missiles, which arrive with little warning. Local residents in Komyshuvakha said the aid distribution had run every week for months and was well known in the area. Ukraine's foreign ministry called the strike a deliberate attack on civilians receiving food and supplies.