Desk Report
Publish: 03 Apr 2022, 12:41 pm
People walk on a street with several dead bodies on the ground a street in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv || Photo: AFP
Ukrainian forces have buried hundreds of people in a mass grave
in a commuter town outside Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, after retaking control of
the area from Russian troops, according to an official.
“In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass
graves,” Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told the AFP news agency by phone on Saturday.
He said the heavily destroyed town’s streets are littered
with corpses.
“All these people were shot, killed, in the back of the
head,” Fedoruk said.
He said the victims were men and women, and that he had also
seen a 14-year-old boy among the dead.
The mayor also confirmed to Al Jazeera that he had seen at
least 22 bodies on Bucha’s streets.
He said it had not been possible to collect the bodies yet,
amid fears that Russian forces had booby-trapped the corpses.
“[Fedoruk] is claiming that this has been a deliberate
targeting by Russian soldiers – basically a massacre of civilians in his town,”
said Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Lviv in western Ukraine.
Bucha has seen fierce fighting during the past few weeks and
had been under Russian occupation for about a month until it was retaken this
week.
“According to the mayor [the dead people] were trying to
escape to Ukrainian held territory when, according to him, they were simply
gunned down,” McBride said.
He said Ukraine’s ministry of defence has accused Russia of
killing civilians in other towns.
“[The ministry] are saying that as they push forward, and
the Russians are withdrawing, they are taking back territory, and it does
appear as they do so that in places like Bucha and maybe in other towns there
could well be more grisly discoveries waiting to be uncovered,” McBride said.
David DesRoches, a professor at the National Defense
University in Washington, told Al Jazeera that the deliberate killing of
civilians is a war crime.
“Placement of booby-traps and placement of mines are clear
violations of the law of warfare, as well as deliberate targeting of
civilians,” he said.
Brovary retaken
Ukrainian forces also recaptured the city of Brovary, 20km
(12 miles) east of the capital, Mayor Ihor Sapozhko said in a televised Friday
night address.
Shops were reopening and residents were returning but “still
stand ready to defend” their city, he added.
“Russian occupants have now left practically all of the
Brovary district,” Sapozhko said. “Tonight, [Ukrainian] armed forces will work
to clear settlements of [remaining] occupants, military hardware, and possibly
from mines.”
A prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last
month in a combat zone near the capital was found dead on Friday in the Huta
Mezhyhirska village north of Kyiv, the country’s prosecutor general’s office
announced.
Maks Levin, 40, worked as a photojournalist and videographer
for many Ukrainian and international publications.
The prosecutor general’s office attributed his death to two
gunshots allegedly fired by the Russian military, and it said an investigation
was under way.
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Topic : Ukraine Kyiv Russian troops Russia Bucha
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