The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has disclosed that investigators searching through a new mass burial site in Ukraine found evidence that some of the dead were tortured, including some of the bodies with broken limbs and ropes around their necks.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the site near Izium, recently recaptured from Russian forces, appears to be one of the largest discovered in Ukraine.
In a video that was shared yesterday, Zelenskyy spoke out just hours after the exhumations began, apparently to underscore the gravity of the discovery. He said more than 400 graves had been found at the site but the number of victims wasn’t yet known.
Digging in the rain, workers hauled body after body out of the sandy soil in a misty pine forest near Izium. Protected by head-to-toe suits and rubber gloves, they gently felt through the decomposing remains of the victims’ clothing, seemingly looking for identifying items.
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Reporters who visited the site saw graves marked with simple wooden crosses. Some of the markers bore people’s names and had flowers hanging from them.
Africa Today News, New York reports that before exhumation, investigators with metal detectors scanned the site for explosives, and soldiers strung red and white plastic tape between the trees.
Zelenskyy said hundreds of civilian adults and children, as well as soldiers, had been found tortured or shot or killed by shelling near Izium’s Pishchanske cemetery.
He cited evidence of atrocities, such as a body with a rope around its neck and broken arms. In another sign of possible torture, one man was found with his hands tied, according to Serhiy Bohdan, the head of Kharikiv police investigations, and Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets.