The death toll from Russia's bombing of an aid distribution point in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region on Monday has risen to 53, the acting regional governor said on Friday, Reuters reported — making it one of the deadliest strikes on civilians this year.

Source: Reuters via EuropeSays

Acting governor Mykhailo Semikin announced the new toll in a post on the Telegram messaging app, and said search and rescue work at the site in the village of Komyshuvakha had entered its fifth day, Reuters reported. Ukraine's Emergency Service had earlier on Friday put the toll at 50, and said the work was continuing despite difficult conditions and the constant threat of repeat Russian strikes.

This is a follow-up to the strike Awaaz Punjab reported on November 5, when the confirmed toll stood at 42 and rescuers were on their fourth day at the site. Eleven more bodies have been accounted for since then.

What happened on Monday

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russian forces first dropped aerial bombs on an underground school building being used as a distribution point as people arrived to collect aid, then struck the shelter with more bombs. Ukrainian officials have said nine aerial bombs hit the village in total.

Classes had long been suspended at the school because of its proximity to the front — Komyshuvakha lies some 17 km (11 miles) from the nearest Russian positions — but it served as a shelter and handed out humanitarian aid every Monday, Zelenskyy said.

The World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity, which delivers food and water to the community, said the facility that was hit was a humanitarian and administrative centre for locals. "This strike hit a place where a community was organising help for its own residents," said Yuliya Stefanyuk, WCK's response director for Ukraine.

The fifth day of rescue work

Ukraine's national police said the strikes included a 3-ton FAB glide bomb, a weapon that defence intelligence websites say carries around 1.4 tons of explosives. Body-camera footage from one of the police officers killed in the attack, which Reuters verified, showed the moments before a second strike hit the shelter where residents were hiding after a radio warning. Four police officers and two rescue workers were among the dead, Ukrainian officials have said.

Moscow and Kyiv both deny deliberately targeting civilians, Reuters reported.

What happens next: search and rescue work is continuing at the site, so the toll may change again. Russia's claim about what it targeted has not been independently verified, and Ukraine's account rests on its officials, the police and the aid charity working in the village.