Europe

Ukraine says hundreds buried at mass grave site as search for relatives continues

Zelenskiy says officials have found evidence of torture on exhumed bodies

Ukrainian emergency workers dig up bodies from a mass grave site near the city of Izyum. Photograph: Nicole Tung/The New York Times

Sat Sep 17 2022 - 22:19

Ukrainian emergency workers on Saturday dug up more bodies from a wooded burial site near the city of Izyum, in the Kharkiv region, which was recently recaptured from Russian forces.

Ukraine said hundreds are buried at the site, including at least 17 Ukrainian servicemen found in a mass grave on Friday and others who may be civilians buried in individual graves marked with wooden crosses.

The causes of death have not yet been established, although residents say some of the graves were of people who died in an airstrike. Ukrainian authorities have said at least one of the bodies had tied hands and rope marks on the neck.

Bodies with their hands tied were found at a mass burial site in Izium after Ukrainian forces recaptured the city in northeastern Ukraine. (Reuters)

Moscow has not commented on the discovery of the graves. It regularly denies committing atrocities in the war or targeting civilians.

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Investigators said the condition of the teeth showed some of the people were elderly.

“Exhumations are under way. Their identities are currently not known,” said Roman Kasianenko, a regional prosecutor. He said three bodies dug up on Friday had been identified.

Holding a list of names and numbers, resident Volodymyr Kolesnyk stepped between graves looking for relatives he said were killed in an airstrike on an apartment building shortly before the town fell in April, as the invaders swept through the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

Ukraine last week took back dozens of towns and villages in the area in a surprise counterattack.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synehubov on Friday said he had been aware of mass deaths when shells hit a five-storey apartment block shortly before the Russian occupation. In May, a Ukrainian military official said more than 40 people died in an attack in the town.

Reuters could not immediately verify details of the attack, or who buried the bodies.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said officials have found evidence of torture on exhumed bodies, adding that about 10 torture sites have been found across the territory liberated this month.

The head of the Russia-installed administration that abandoned the northeastern area around Izyum last week accused Ukrainians of staging atrocities. “I have not heard anything about burials,” Vitaly Ganchev told Rossiya-24 state television.

Earlier, one of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s four main power lines has been repaired and is once again supplying the plant with electricity from the Ukrainian grid two weeks after it went down, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Saturday.

Even though the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, have been shut down, the fuel in them still needs cooling to avoid a potentially catastrophic meltdown. That means the plant needs electricity to pump water through the core of the reactors.

The power supply at Zaporizhzhia has been a source of major concern after the last main line went down and then three backup lines that can connect it to a nearby coal-fired power plant were also disconnected.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Saturday its forces had launched strikes on Ukrainian positions in several parts of Ukraine and accused Kyiv of carrying out shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Russian forces conducted their strikes in the Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, according to the ministry, which added that Ukrainian forces had carried out an unsuccessful offensive near Pravdyne in Kherson.

Radiation levels at Zaporizhzhia remain normal, according to the ministry. It said two incidents of Ukrainian shelling were recorded near the plant on Saturday.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry denied Ukrainian forces had carried out shelling near the facility in the south of the country.

Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the Zaporizhzhia plant. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution on Thursday demanding that Russia end its occupation of the facility. — Reuters

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