Ukrainian Jewish school, orphanage struck in overnight Russian drone attack; no injuries

A wave of Russian attacks on southern Ukraine on Thursday night destroyed a Jewish school and damaged a nearby orphanage housing more than 100 children in Odesa, community leaders said.

The Russian drone attack on the Black Sea port city damaged port infrastructure and wounded two people, according to the regional governor quoted by Reuters. A pre-dawn attack on the city on Monday wounded 14, including two children, AP reported.

Drone attacks across Ukraine intensified Friday morning, as Russia launched more than 400 drones at the country, on top of 210 drone attacks Thursday night, according to AP. While Russia has mainly carried out major drone and missile strikes at night since the start of the war four years ago, daytime attacks have become more frequent in recent weeks.

No injuries were reported at the two Jewish institutions, but the Chabad-run “Or Avner” school was rendered unusable after a direct strike. The nearby Jewish orphanage, part of the “Mishpacha Ukraine” network and home to 124 children, was also damaged.

“We had barely managed to close the door when the massive explosion hit. It shook the entire street,” the institution’s head, Rabbi Avraham Wolff, told the Chabad.org website.

Rabbi Moshe Azman, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, credited caregivers and older children at the orphanage for saving the lives of the institution’s little children in a tweet on X, saying they managed to get the young kids to safety in time.

Last night, Odessa came under heavy Russian attack. Among the targets was the Chabad Or Avner Jewish school, which sustained serious damage and is now unfit for use. For many years, Jewish children—including orphans and refugees from various regions of Ukraine—had studied there… pic.twitter.com/6d3plWUleH

— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) April 30, 2026

Following the incident, high school students will temporarily study alongside younger pupils in makeshift classrooms, corridors and shelters, said Wolff’s wife, Chaya, who oversees Chabad’s local school network.

“It’s difficult, but we will adapt,” she said.

Rabbi Wolff said the network, which provides education, welfare services and refugee assistance, has continued functioning throughout the war.

An Or Avner school in Kyiv suffered “significant structural damage” when it was hit by a Russian drone attack in October 2024, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

“We have rebuilt before,” he says. “We will rebuild again.”

This is not the first time that institutions of Odesa’s Jewish community have been damaged since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

A historic synagogue built in 1898, Nachlas Eliezer, was significantly damaged by a Russian suicide drone in August of last year, per a report by the JTA.

A missile strike also hit the offices of Hillel International in the city in 2023, per the JTA.

Odesa’s Jewish community was once one of the largest and most vibrant in Eastern Europe, with estimates that about one-third of the city’s population, 600,000 were Jewish on the eve of World War II, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Today, the core Jewish population across Ukraine is about 32,000, according to an estimate by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.