kyiv authorities have finished exhuming a mass grave in a forest near the Ukrainian city of Izium, in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, with 447 dead, including 215 women and five children.
“The work lasted for a week, without interruption. The bodies of 447 people were removed. Of this total, 215 are women, 194 men, five children and 22 soldiers. In addition, the remains of 11 people 447 dead bodies were removed. dug out of the tombs. Of these, 215 are women, 194 are men, 5 are children and 22 are military,” said the head of the National Police of Ukraine.
According to Igor Klymenko, the remains of 11 people whose sex has not yet been determined were also found.
Local media reported that Klymenko noticed that many unearthed bodies bore signs of torture.
Police criminologists and forensic doctors now face an even more complex task of identifying each of the fatalities.
“Their families must bury them as human beings,” added the chede of the National Police of Ukraine.
According to the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegoubov, quoted on the Telegram social network, most of the bodies show signs of violent death and at least 30 have signs of torture.
“There are bodies with a rope around their necks, hands tied, limbs broken or bullet wounds. Many men had their genitals amputated,” Sinegoubov continued, referring to evidence of “terrible torture” inflicted on the population.
Several hundred cross-marked graves and a mass grave were discovered in mid-September near the town of Izium, which was under Russian occupation for several months before being retaken by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian police also claimed to have discovered “torture rooms” in the region, including in Izium.
Russian forces have been accused of numerous abuses in the territories under their control in Ukraine, in particular in Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv, where the bodies of civilians were discovered after their withdrawal from the area in late March.
Moscow denied having committed these crimes and considered the discovery of bodies in Izium a “lie”.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine has already caused the flight of more than 13 million people -more than six million internally displaced persons and more than 7.4 million to European countries-, according to the most recent data from the UN, which places this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
Source: TSF
