Russian Drone Strike Targets Emergency Crews at Scene of Deadly Southern Ukraine Bombing

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — A Russian drone struck emergency responders carrying out rescue operations in southern Ukraine on Sunday, hitting a former school and adjacent shelter that had previously been hit by multiple Russian guided bombs while civilians waited for humanitarian aid, according to authorities.

Ukrainian officials said Monday’s assault killed at least 55 people in the village of Komyshuvakha, located near the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Sunday’s strike on the same site caused no injuries, though specialized rescue equipment sustained damage, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, said roughly 50 people remain unaccounted for. Many recovered bodies have yet to be identified, and DNA analysis is underway.

Mykola Krasnov, a 72-year-old village resident, told The Associated Press on Saturday that he was still searching for his wife and had received no word from rescue teams.

“She went to get humanitarian aid, and a three-ton bomb was dropped there. Where is she?” he said. “She never came home, and they didn’t find her body there. She isn’t in the morgue, and she isn’t alive here.”

HUR said on Saturday that it had identified some of the Russian service members involved in the “double tap” aerial bomb strike that destroyed the former school and underground facility residents had been using as shelter.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of carrying out rapid successive strikes on the same location to target emergency crews responding to the first attack.

On Saturday, police officers and relatives gathered in Zaporizhzhia for a farewell ceremony honoring six officers killed in Russian strikes on Komyshuvakha, four of whom died near the former school.

Rain fell as families wept beside the coffins, while officers held portraits of their fallen colleagues.

“They used every skill at their disposal to protect themselves. But when the enemy deliberately gathered civilians in one place and then launched strikes against them, no skills could have helped,” said Andrii Khomenko, a police lieutenant colonel who had worked alongside the victims.

Yuliia Nykonenko, a senior police lieutenant, said the officers had risked their lives to save others, including children. She recalled that they had once escaped a Russian FPV drone together.

The community also bid farewell to three residents among the deceased. They were buried near one another in a section of the Zaporizhzhia cemetery where authorities plan to establish a memorial.

Among the mourners was Yurii Karapetian, a community leader whose wife, Natalia Karapetian, was killed. He said she had been distributing bread to those in the shelter when the Russian bombs struck.

“This pain is unbearable,” he said.

He said his wife chose to remain in Komyshuvakha to help other residents, many of them elderly and living alone. He also called on the international community to act.

“The whole world must understand that if the Russians are not stopped, they will not stop. They will not stop at Ukraine. They will not stop anywhere,” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday called the attack on emergency crews in Komyshuvakha “absolute cynicism and brutality.”

In a post on X, Zelenskyy also said overnight Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region left more than 600,000 people without power, with other regions also facing outages.

Russia launched 115 missiles, 1,900 guided aerial bombs and more than 3,000 drones against Ukraine in the past week, he said. Many of the missiles were produced this year, he added, urging Kyiv’s partners to sanction entities involved in their production.

“If the world lacks sufficient anti-ballistic capabilities to protect Ukrainian skies, then the missiles must be stopped on the production lines,” he said, urging the European Union to impose a strong 22nd sanctions package against Russia.

The Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, lost its external power supply after a damaged power line was disconnected for safety, the plant’s management reported on Sunday.

The plant was running on backup diesel generators after an automatic protection system shut down the damaged Ferosplavna line, it said.

The plant went offline shortly after being captured by Russia early in the war, but still requires power to keep essential cooling systems running. Its external power supply has been periodically severed, raising fears of a nuclear accident in the event of prolonged outages, as Moscow and Kyiv trade blame for strikes that damaged nearby power lines.

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