Russian strikes on aid centre, hospice and hospital kill at least 38 across Ukraine

Russian strikes across Ukraine over the last 24 hours have killed at least 38 civilians and injured scores of others. The targets included a humanitarian aid distribution centre, a hospice for terminally ill patients and a hospital, among other civilian sites.

The deadliest attack took place in the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, where a glide bomb attack on Monday night is already known to have killed at least 31 people. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the number of victims was set to rise, as more than 50 people could be trapped under the rubble.

Zelensky called the Komyshuvakha strike "one of the largest mass killings committed by Russia during this war". He said Ukraine had proposed to extend and expand last week's ceasefire in the Kherson region, which allowed people from the frontline Russian-occupied village of Oleshky to evacuate, and that the attack on Komyshuvakha was Moscow's response.

Authorities said nine 3,000kg aerial bombs hit Komyshuvakha as residents were gathering to receive humanitarian aid at a distribution centre. Local media reported that when the attack began, people took refuge in an underground school, but the roof of the shelter collapsed, trapping many underneath.

Regional head Mykhailo Semikin said, "The scale of the tragedy is difficult to comprehend." Russia's defence ministry, by contrast, said the attack had targeted Ukrainian military units and killed 25 servicemen.

However, BBC News Russian defence correspondent Ilya Abishev reported that there was no credible evidence the site was being used by the Ukrainian military, and there were no major military or industrial facilities in the settlement of Komyshuvakha. The village lies to the south-east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, which has come under constant Russian bombardment.

The UN's human rights monitoring mission said the distribution of humanitarian aid at the local school had been highly publicised and the attack "seems to have violated the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law". Last month the UN said civilian casualties in Ukraine were at a "record level".

Further north, in Dnipro, nearly 50 terminally ill patients were being transferred to other facilities after their hospice was destroyed by a Russian missile on Monday night. The oldest of the patients was 90 years old.

Dnipro's mayor, Boris Filatov, posted photos on Telegram showing elderly people lying in their beds in a hospice room with blown-out windows and rubble and broken glass strewn across the floors. "I realise that I am violating ethics," he wrote. "I want as many people as possible to see these photos. Especially politicians and diplomats. Especially abroad. These are elderly, terminally ill people. This is a Russian missile."

Elsewhere in Dnipro, a separate strike killed two people and left 18 others wounded. Another five people were killed in aerial bomb and drone strikes on Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.

Russia has also struck energy infrastructure in nine regions, affecting water and heating supplies. Kyiv's main water supplier, Kyivvodokanal, said the water supply in the capital was entirely cut off "due to enemy attacks and damage to the capital's energy infrastructure". The entire metro network was suspended on Tuesday, and Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned about the situation surrounding the city's power supply.