Ukraine aid site toll rises as strikes hit hospitals, power facilities

KYIV, Ukraine — The death toll from a Russian strike on a humanitarian aid site in southern Ukraine rose Tuesday as rescuers searched the rubble, while overnight attacks damaged hospitals and power facilities elsewhere in the country. NPR reported 29 dead, with 48 people still missing. Al Jazeera reported at least 31 killed.

The Monday strike destroyed an aid facility and shelter in Komyushuvakha, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region where people had gathered to receive humanitarian aid. Rescuers and volunteers pulled more bodies from the site Tuesday. NPR reported that the attack used bunker-busting bombs filled with nearly 1.5 tons of explosives.

“The scale of the tragedy is terrifying,” Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of the regional military administration, wrote online. He called it “one of the worst tragedies in terms of the number of civilian victims in our region since the start of the full-scale war.” Semikin said the dead included four police officers and two rescue workers. At least five people were hurt, and the region declared three days of mourning.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched 289 attack drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles overnight. He said the main target was energy infrastructure — power generation facilities and substations — in the Odesa, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv and Rivne regions.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had targeted electricity facilities in the Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, claiming they supplied power to Ukraine’s army and military factories. More than 180,000 people were without electricity in the Zhytomyr region Tuesday morning, Governor Vitalii Bunechko said. Odesa introduced scheduled outages.

In Kharkiv, a strike damaged a hospital. Zelenskyy said 73 people were injured and that the cardiology department, where patients were being treated, was damaged, according to Al Jazeera. NPR cited local authorities who said a combined missile and drone attack in the Kharkiv region wounded at least 62 people. The reports did not establish that these were separate attacks. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said more than 1,000 hospital windows were shattered; regional military administration head Oleh Syniehubov said more than 200 patients were moved to other facilities.

In the Dnipro area, an attack killed one person and wounded 17, according to local authorities cited by NPR. It damaged an outpatient clinic and a hospital, and rescuers pulled a woman alive from the rubble Tuesday morning.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 856 Ukrainian drones overnight. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 493 drones were fired toward the capital. In Yaroslavl, a Ukrainian drone attack wounded two oil refinery employees and damaged the facility, Governor Mikhail Yevrayev said. Al Jazeera reported, citing Yevrayev, that the attack caused a fire.

The attacks came ahead of U.S.-Russian-Ukrainian talks expected in Abu Dhabi next week. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said the discussions would cover “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts, and next steps toward peace.” Zelenskyy noted that the barrage coincided with U.S. elections and urged help defending Ukraine’s skies.