Buka: Ukraine says Russian soldiers killed civilians.
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Ukrainian investigators began digging a mass grave in Buka on Friday in what police say will be a war crimes case targeting Russian soldiers occupying the Kyiv commuter city.
The grave – a long deep moat in the mud behind a gold-domed church – was used by Ukrainians to bury neighbors who they claim were killed at the hands of Russian armed forces who arrived on 26 February.
On Friday, crews dressed in white forensic overalls were using a flatbed lorry fixed with a mechanical crane to retrieve bodies from the ditch.
The bodies were placed on the ground and inspected by teams including police officers who did the paperwork.
Most of the remains outside the grave were zipped inside black plastic body bags, surrounded by tape.
A man at work was wearing a tavern marked with the words “war crime prosecutor.”
Kyiv regional police chief Andrey Nebitov said there were 40 bodies in the grave, including two members of Ukrainian military forces.
He said the bodies had bullet wounds, claiming that they had been clearly targeted by soldiers rather than collateral damage from air strikes and artillery fire.
“I can define these incidents as war crimes,” he said. “International law defines the killing of civilians during a military conflict of any kind as a war crime.”
“These bodies will be taken out for court examination, they will be sent for forensic medical examination and an autopsy.”
The city of Buka has become the epicenter of war crimes charges against soldiers who ordered President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine on February 24.
On Saturday, an AFP team discovered 20 bodies on a street in the city, some 37,000 before the war.
Ukraine says Russian soldiers killed civilians.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the killings and has condemned photographs depicting the scene as fake.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)