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This Friday, September 16, the head of the Ukrainian Police, Ihor Klymenko, reported that the majority of people found in a mass grave in the recently recovered city of Izium are civilians. The United Nations Organization indicated that it is evaluating the sending of a human rights mission to the northeastern city, which until a week ago was a bastion of Russian troops. The Kremlin has not commented on the find.
Ukraine advances in a rapid counteroffensive and recovery of its territories. But with the rescue of towns and cities, dozens of crimes that would have been committed under the occupation of Russian troops also emerge.
A senior adviser to the Ukrainian Presidency reported this Friday, September 16, that So far, 450 graves have been found in a mass grave near the newly reclaimed city of Izium.in the northeast of the country.
Most of the people buried there are civilians, according to the director of the country’s Police, Ihor Klymenko, during a press conference offered in recent hours.
“We have information that there are also soldiers there,” Klymenko added.
A grave with a sign indicating that it contained the bodies of 17 soldiers was seen at the site, said Oleg Kotenko, a ministry official in charge of the reintegration of the occupied territories.
Witnesses cited by Reuters said multiple bodies were found at the scene with ropes around their necks and their hands tied.
Local authorities say the findings are proof of war crimes committed by the Moscow Army, which until last weekend occupied the city as its main stronghold in the entire Kharkiv province.
AP agency reporters, who visited the forest where the bodies were found, counted hundreds of graves among the trees, marked with wooden crosses, most of them numbered. Like the authorities, they counted more than 400.
Sergei Gorodko, a resident of Izium, said the individual graves contain dozens of adults and children killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building. The man claimed that he pulled some of them out of the rubble with his “own hands.”
Zelensky: “Russia leaves death everywhere”
In addition to the people found in the mass grave, the head of the Ukrainian Police indicated that they discovered the bodies of at least 50 other civilians.
The official also indicated that seven Sri Lankan students who were in the Ukrainian city of Vovchansk, near the Russian border, were imprisoned and tortured.
“The necessary procedural actions have already started. We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has led to (…) Bucha, Mariupol, and now unfortunately Izium. Russia leaves death everywhere and must be held accountable for it,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky.
While the exhumations of the bodies continue, Russia has not commented publicly on this matter.
Kremlin soldiers fled Izium leaving behind dozens of military equipment and vehicles during surprise Ukrainian counterattacks, whose forces retook control of most of Kharkiv. A strategic province due to its proximity to the great Donbass region, which kyiv seeks to recover and where Moscow has concentrated most of its troops.
The UN studies sending a human rights mission to Izium
The United Nations (UN) intends to soon send a delegation of human rights monitors to Izium to inspect the place where hundreds of bodies have been found.
“They intend to go there to try to establish a little more about what could have happened,” said Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the organization’s Human Rights office, at a press conference in Geneva on Friday.
According to statements by Sergei Bolvinov, senior investigator of the Ukrainian Police, some of the victims found were shot, others died by artillery fire, by the explosion of mines or by air strikes.
It is “one of the largest burials in a liberated city,” he described.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has updated figures on children who have died since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the war on February 24. The accusing body stated that so far at least 384 minors have died and 753 have been injured.
The number of children killed and injured in the Russian conflict is expected to be higher, as the released figures do not include deaths in Russian-occupied areas and near the war front lines.
With Reuters, AP and local media
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