The building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed during the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv this year. Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside the building. The remaining five died elsewhere in the city.
Workers used cranes, excavators and their hands to clear more debris from the site, while sniffer dogs searched for buried victims. The blast blew out windows and doors in neighbouring buildings in a wide radius of damage.
The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences.
Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles in what Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was one of the biggest bombardments of the war, now in its fourth year.
Russia has launched a summer offensive on parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre front line and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas.
At the same time, US-led peace efforts have failed to gain traction. Middle East tensions and US trade tariffs have drawn world attention away from Ukraine's pleas for more diplomatic and economic pressure to be placed on Russia.
The US Embassy in Kyiv said the attack clashed with the attempts by the administration of President Donald Trump to reach a settlement that will stop the fighting.
"This senseless attack runs counter to President Trump's call to stop the killing and end the war," the embassy posted on social platform X.
Kyiv authorities declared an official day of mourning. Mourners laid flowers on swings and slides at a playground across the street from the collapsed building.
By dawn on Tuesday, residents of buildings in the densely populated neighbourhood could be seen huddled in ground-floor entry-ways to seek shelter from the ongoing drone assault.
Drones were striking every few minutes within hundreds of metres of the building hit by the missile. The continuing attack forced firefighters and rescue teams to delay the rescue operation.
In another development North Korea will send thousands of military construction workers and deminers to support reconstruction work in Russia's Kursk region, in the latest sign of expanding cooperation between the nations.
North Korea has already supplied thousands of combat troops and a vast amount of conventional weapons to back Russia's war against Ukraine.
In April, Pyongyang and Moscow said that their soldiers fought together to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia's Kursk border region, though Ukraine has insisted it still has troops present there.
Wrapping up a one-day visit to Pyongyang, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would send 1,000 sappers to clear mines in the Kursk region and 5,000 military construction workers to restore infrastructure there, according to Russia's state news agency, Tass.
