Russian forces accused of secret burials of Mariupol civilians in mass graves
Russia has been hiding evidence of its “barbaric” war crimes in Mariupol by burying the bodies of civilians killed by shelling in a new mass grave, the city’s mayor said on Thursday, as a US satellite imagery company released photos that appeared to match the site.
The mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said Russian trucks had collected corpses from the streets of the port city and had transported them to the nearby village of Manhush. They were then secretly thrown into a mass grave in a field next to the settlement’s old cemetery, he said.
“The invaders are concealing evidence of their crimes. The cemetery is located near a petrol station to the left side of a circular road. The Russians have dug huge trenches, 30 metres wide. They chuck people in,” he said.
Later on Thursday, the US company Maxar Technologies released images of what appeared to be a mass grave in the same area. The site had been expanded in recent weeks to contain more than 200 new graves, Maxar said. [Continue reading…]