50 bodies of civilians exhumed from mass grave in Severodonetsk, LPR
In Severodonetsk, Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), several dozen bodies of civilians have been dug up from a mass grave. In total, up to 250 people who fell victim to the fighting for the city in 2022 may be buried in the makeshift cemetery, writes TASS.
As the assistant to the head of the regional Investigative Committee Elena Markovskaya said, the department’s employees have already examined about 50 bodies. “Many of them were found to have mine blast wounds, bullet wounds, and a number of citizens died of natural causes,” she said.
During the battles for Severodonetsk, the city cemetery was in the shelling zone, which is why people had to be buried in the village of Lesnaya Dacha, said Yulia Kozhevnikova, commander of the field team of the interdepartmental working group. According to her, while the situation allowed, local funeral companies were engaged in burial, but after the situation worsened, this task was taken on by utility workers.
To identify the exhumed citizens, samples are taken for DNA analysis, and then the bodies are reburied in individual graves in the cemetery.
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Kozhevnikova added that, unlike other areas of the LPR, where a similar procedure is being carried out, bullet wounds are found on a significant number of bodies from the mass grave in Severodonetsk. She also noted that the bodies were buried between winter and spring 2022, when Russian troops were not yet fighting in the city. According to the specialist, this indicates that Ukrainian troops were involved in the deaths of some civilians.
Earlier it became known that during the retreat from Avdiivka the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) mined the bodies of local residents. According to the security forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic, this was witnessed by relatives of the townspeople.
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