Russian air strikes on a humanitarian aid centre in the Ukrainian village of Komyshuvakha killed 31 people, among them two rescue workers and four police officers who died when a second strike hit the site after the first.
The building was a school that had been closed to pupils because the village, in the Zaporizhzhia region, sits too close to the front line, Al Jazeera reported. It was being used instead as a shelter and as a weekly distribution point where residents collected aid packages every Monday. Five people were injured, two of them rescue workers taken to hospital.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russians “struck first”, then launched a second strike, calling it “a vile terrorist strike” and “further proof that Russia does not want any kind of de-escalation”. He said Russian forces could not have been unaware that residents gathered at the building each week for humanitarian packages. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Al Jazeera reported the strike alongside the announcement of new peace talks scheduled for 10 and 11 November.
What Hiru News adds
Hiru News reported that nine bombs were used, specifying KAB-500 and three-tonne FAB-3000 guided aerial bombs, and said the concrete underground structure — built with European Union funding — collapsed completely and caught fire.
Hiru named the regional governor, Mykhailo Semikin, as confirming the building’s use as a civilian shelter and aid distribution point, and reported Zelensky as urging the United States and the wider international community to intervene.
A photograph released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia directorate, published with this report, shows rescuers with headlamps recovering a body from inside a collapsed concrete structure with exposed reinforcing bar — consistent with the underground shelter described.
Points of difference between the two reports
The number missing. Hiru’s headline reports 48 people missing. Al Jazeera’s account gives 31 killed and five injured and makes no mention of missing people. This desk reproduces the figure only as Hiru’s claim; it is not corroborated.
The date of the attack. Al Jazeera dates the strike to Monday 2 November and published the same day. Hiru, filing on Tuesday evening Colombo time, reported Zelensky as saying the attack came on the day of the United States congressional elections, which would place it a day later. The Al Jazeera dating is followed here. The “every Monday” aid collection described by both accounts is consistent with a Monday strike.
The toll. An Al Jazeera video item published the following day cited “at least 26” killed, below the 31 in its own earlier written report and in Hiru’s. The higher figure is the one both written accounts carry.
Corroborated. Two verified newsrooms, reporting independently and in broad agreement on the location, the nature of the target, the double strike and the deaths of rescuers and police.
