Ukraine says death toll from Zaporizhzhia bombing rises to 40

At least 40 people were killed when Russian bombs struck an aid distribution site and an underground shelter in southeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday, as rescuers searched for dozens more feared trapped beneath the rubble.

The attack hit the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region on Monday. Zelenskyy said more than 30 people may still be under the debris. Local officials had previously confirmed 37 deaths and estimated that about 38 people remained trapped, Al Jazeera reported.

Ukraine’s national police released body-camera footage Wednesday from an officer killed in the attack. The video shows damaged buildings and residents moving toward an underground shelter after an initial strike. A warning of incoming guided bombs comes over a two-way radio. “Quickly [go] to the shelter!” an officer tells residents. Moments later, a blast is heard, flames appear and the recording stops.

BBC Verify confirmed that the body-camera video was filmed at the same location as footage released by Ukraine’s state emergency service showing the aftermath of Monday’s attack. The BBC reported that the shelter was near a school being used to distribute humanitarian aid and was at least two floors underground. Ukraine’s emergency service also published video of a large crater left by the attack.

Zelenskyy said Russia dropped nine aerial bombs on the village. According to the BBC, Ukraine said some of the glide bombs weighed 3,000 kilograms. “First, they hit people who came to receive humanitarian aid, and then rescuers and police officers who arrived at the scene,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

Four police officers and two rescue workers were among those killed, Al Jazeera reported. Local authorities said Russian drones were disrupting the search, though Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of the regional military administration, said the operation would continue. The United Nations human rights mission in Ukraine said Tuesday that the bombing likely violated international law, according to Al Jazeera. The Russian military has not publicly commented on the attack, the BBC reported.

Zelenskyy called the bombing a “vile terrorist strike” and said it showed Russia did not want to ease the conflict, according to Al Jazeera. “Unfortunately, there has been very little reaction from the world to this insane attack,” he wrote.

The killings came ahead of planned talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11. Zelenskyy said Wednesday that he had spoken for an hour and a half with U.S. peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner before the negotiations. He also said Ukrainian officials had met representatives from the United States, Europe, NATO and the World Bank in Brussels to discuss postwar reconstruction, with talks on security guarantees set to continue Thursday.