More than 1,500 graves have been excavated since June in an area of the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol controlled by Russian troops, according to satellite images analyzed by the British television network BBC.
According to these reports, the images show three burial sites in Staryi Krim, Manhush and Vinohradne which, according to official sources and Ukrainian witnesses, contain thousands of bodies. The images lead to the conclusion that 1,500 graves have been excavated since June, bringing the total number to more than 4,600 since the beginning of the war.
Witnesses quoted by the British television channel have assured that they have seen during the last months representatives of the Russian authorities in the city – now annexed to Russia – removing bodies from the rubble of the destroyed buildings.
The mentioned channel has also published declarations of residents in Mariúpol who denounce that up to now they have not been able to find the bodies of relatives missing during the fighting, many of which could be in mass graves in the center of the city after the removal of bodies from the streets during the fighting.
«On some terrible days we were told that there were more than a hundred bodies, sometimes 150 bodies, that had to be collected,» said Vaagn Mnatsakanian, a resident who participated in local teams engaged in excavating these graves for Ukrainian municipal authorities.
Others have recounted visiting makeshift morgues in Mariupol in the summer to try to find their loved ones. «People need to know the truth about these horrors so that it doesn’t happen again,» said Tatiana, a woman living in the city.
Mariupol, a key port city in the war, was a strategic target of Moscow from the beginning of the invasion, unleashed on February 24 on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was bombarded and attacked with artillery for weeks, causing enormous destruction and hundreds of deaths.
Ukrainian authorities claim that at least 25,000 people were killed during the fighting in Mariupol, including between 5,000 and 7,000 who were buried in attacks on buildings by Russian forces.
