In pictures: Hundreds of bodies are exhumed in Izhum

taketonews

Police officers and forensic experts lift a body from one of the graves near the city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine. Last Saturday the city was recaptured from the Russians, on Thursday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that 440 graves had been found.


Photo Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The graves of unidentified war victims are marked with wooden crosses. Although President Zelensky spoke of a mass grave, Ukraine’s Commissioner for Missing Persons told a television channel that the bodies “were buried in a civilized manner at least.”


Photo Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

The bodies are being exhumed for examination, including to determine whether war crimes have been committed. Police Chief Serhi Bolvinov told Sky News some were killed by airstrikes, mine explosions or artillery fire, but the cause of death of many bodies has not yet been determined.


Photo Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Rescuers are ready to exhume the bodies. The excavations took place largely in silence, the BBC reports on its website.

A March 2022 satellite image of the forest where the graves were found. Izhum was a strategic city for the Russian armed forces because of its logistical connections with Russia.

Aid workers will search for bodies in the forest near Izjoum on Friday, September 16. Reporters from Reuters news agency reported on Friday that bodies were also found with hands tied and a rope around the neck.

Police officers stop at the graves. A member of Izyum’s city council said on Monday that at least 1,000 citizens of the city had been killed during the Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of city residents have fled.

One of the rescuers takes a break while searching for bodies in the forest near Izhum. Ukraine has given journalists access to the work to show what happened during the occupation, according to the BBC.


Photo Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Oleg Kotenko, Ukraine’s commissioner for “missing persons under special circumstances”, takes pictures of one of the graves with his smartphone. Most have no name.


Photo Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

A coffin was pulled from the ground on Friday in the forest near Izhum. Police say 445 graves have been counted, some with multiple bodies. Twenty soldiers are said to have been found in one of the graves, the BBC reports, based on information from government officials.

Rescuers are resting from work around the graves. Its discovery caused shock internationally. French President Emmanuel Macron said he rejected “in the strongest possible terms the atrocities committed at Izyum during the Russian occupation”.


Photo Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

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