A Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian school building killed four adult civilians as they were gathering to distribute humanitarian aid, Ukraine announced Monday.
Gov. Yuriy Malashko of the Zaporizhzhia region declared the attack “a war crime.” He added that the people killed in the attack were three women and one man, all in their 40s.
Malashko credited the attack not to a missile but to a guided aerial bomb, an increasingly common attack method as Russia’s supply of missiles dwindles.
While Russia denies it targets civilians outright, its missiles have struck dozens of residential buildings and other non-military targets a year and five months since the invasion began.
Rescuers work at a site of a residential building hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine.
Russian forces have launched wave after wave of missiles and suicide drones against the capital of Kyiv and other major cities. Ukrainian forces have become adept at shooting down such attacks, however, thanks largely to the supply of air defense systems from the U.S. and other Western countries.
As a result, Ukrainian investigators have increasingly found instances of Russia dropping older bombs, some around 1,100 pounds. The low-tech explosives easily circumvent modern air defenses like the U.S.-made Patriot missile systems that are designed to counter long-range missiles and drones.
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Russia’s bombs, resurrected from Cold War-era ordnance stashes, have two major advantages over missiles in that they have no propulsion system for air defenses to track, and they remain airborne for barely a minute.
President Biden, left, has approved the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine, a controversial move opposed by allies like the U.K.
