Russian forces have bombed an aid centre in Ukraine, killing at least 31 people, according to Ukrainian officials, as the United States announced plans for new peace talks on November 10 and 11.
The aid centre, at a school in the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, had been closed to students because the village sits too close to the front line, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. Instead, it served as a shelter and as a weekly distribution point for aid packages, which residents who remain in the village collected every Monday.
“The Russians struck first just as people were arriving – a few aerial bombs,” he said in his nightly address. “Then there was a second strike – more air bombs, this time on the shelter. A vile terrorist strike.”
Zelenskyy said the Russians could not have been unaware that residents remaining in Komyshuvakha gathered each week to pick up humanitarian packages.
Among the dead were two members of a rescue crew and four police officers, according to Ukraine’s emergency services. Five people, including two rescue workers, were being treated in hospitals.
Photographs posted online showed smouldering debris scattered across the area. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Zelenskyy said the attack was “further proof that Russia does not want any kind of de-escalation, any real justice.”
Credit: aljazeera.com
