Russian strikes have killed at least 38 civilians across Ukraine in 24 hours, The Star reported. Most died in the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the toll would rise because more than 50 people could still be under the rubble. AFP quoted Zelensky as saying dozens were dead or missing.
Authorities said nine 3,000kg aerial bombs hit the village as residents gathered at a humanitarian aid distribution centre. Local media reported that people took shelter in an underground school, but its roof collapsed. Zelensky called the strike "one of the largest mass killings committed by Russia during this war". Regional head Mykhailo Semikin said the scale of the tragedy was difficult to comprehend.
Russia's defence ministry said the strike targeted Ukrainian military units and killed 25 servicemen. BBC News Russian defence correspondent Ilya Abishev reported that there was no credible evidence the military was using the site. He said the village is important to Ukraine's defence and transport network near the regional capital. The UN human rights monitoring mission said the aid distribution had been highly publicised. It said the attack "seems to have violated the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law".
Zelensky said Ukraine had proposed extending last week's ceasefire in the Kherson region. That truce allowed people to leave the Russian-occupied village of Oleshky. He said the Komyshuvakha strike was Moscow's response.
Other strikes hit a hospice in Dnipro and a hospital in Kharkiv. Zelensky said 73 people were wounded in Kharkiv, most of them elderly patients. In Dnipro, nearly 50 terminally ill patients were moved after a missile destroyed their hospice. A separate strike in the city killed two people, and five more died in the Donetsk region. Attacks on energy infrastructure in nine regions disrupted water and heating. Kyiv lost its entire water supply, and the metro shut down on Tuesday.
The Kremlin said it would join US-brokered three-way peace talks with Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11. It will be the first such meeting since February. Speaking in Berlin on Tuesday, Zelensky said he had not seen "any indication" that Russia was serious about negotiations. US First Lady Melania Trump, credited with brokering the Oleshky truce, will host Russian and Ukrainian representatives at the White House on Thursday. The White House has not said who will attend.