The death toll from a Russian aerial bomb attack on the Ukrainian village of Komyshuvakha in Zaporizhzhia Oblast has risen to 53, regional Governor Mykhaylo Semikin said on Friday, as search and rescue operations continued for a fifth consecutive day.

The final death toll has yet to be established, with emergency crews continuing to search through the rubble at the site of the Nov. 2 attack.

The strike was the deadliest Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia Oblast since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian forces struck the front-line village several times on Nov. 2, initially hitting a school building where local residents had gathered to receive humanitarian aid. One of the bombs used in the attack was a three-ton FAB-3000 aerial bomb containing more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives.

Following the initial strike, Russian forces dropped another nine aerial bombs on a shelter where civilians and rescue workers had taken refuge, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Two rescue workers and a military medic who had rushed to help the wounded were among those killed.

Zelensky described the attack as “exceptionally horrific,” arguing that Russian forces could not have been unaware that civilians regularly gathered at the school to receive humanitarian assistance.

Komyshuvakha, a front-line settlement, had a pre-war population of around 5,000. Local authorities said the security situation had deteriorated sharply over the previous six months, with the last remaining children evacuated in June.

The attack came a day after a six-day ceasefire in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in neighbouring Kherson Oblast ended on Nov. 1. (ILKHA)