According to the mayor, nearly 300 people have been buried in a mass grave in Bucha, a commuter town outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, after Ukrainian troops regained control of the key town. from Russia.
“In Bucha, we buried 280 people in mass graves,” Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP news agency by phone on Saturday. He said the streets of the heavily damaged town were 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 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 the streets of Bucha. He said the bodies had yet to be recovered due to concerns that Russian forces had trapped the bodies.
“[Fedoruk] is claiming that this was a deliberate target by Russian soldiers – essentially a massacre of civilians in his town,” Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reports from Lviv in western Ukraine for know.
Bucha has seen fierce fighting over the past few weeks and was occupied by Russia for about a month until retest this week.
“According to the mayor [the dead people] McBride said.
He said Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has accused Russia of killing civilians in other towns.
“[The ministry] is saying that as they move forward, and the Russians are retreating, they are taking back territory, and that comes when they do so in places like Bucha and possibly in other towns, maybe there are more macabre discoveries waiting to be discovered,” said McBride.
David DesRoches, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told Al Jazeera that intentionally killing civilians is a war crime.
“The laying of mines and the laying of mines are clear violations of the laws of war, as are the deliberate targeting of civilians,” he said.
Brovary caught again
Ukrainian forces have also recaptured the city of Brovary, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the capital, Mayor Ihor Sapozhko said in a televised address Friday night.
Shops have reopened and residents have returned but are “still ready to defend” their city, he added.
“The Russian occupants have practically left all Brovary districts,” said Sapozhko. “Tonight, [Ukrainian] the armed forces will work to settle the settlements of [remaining] occupants, military equipment, and possibly mines. ”
The prosecutor general’s office announced that a prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last month in a fighting area near the capital was found dead Friday in the village of Huta Mezhyhirska, north of Kyiv. .
Maks Levin, 40, has worked as a photojournalist and videographer for many Ukrainian and international publications.
The prosecutor general’s office attributed his death to two shots believed to have been fired by the Russian military, and it said an investigation was underway.
