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Ukrainian Officials Claim 99% Of People Exhumed In Izium Died Violently
- By The Financial District
- Sep 19, 2022
- 2 min read
Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said 99% of the bodies exhumed from the mass burial site at Izium bore signs of violent death.
Photo Insert: Bodies being exhumed from the mass burial site at Izium
“There are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, and one person was buried with a rope around the neck,” he said. “Obviously, these people were tortured and executed.”
Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Sept. 16 that the bodies of the members of Ukraine's Armed Forces with tied hands were found at a mass burial site in the recently liberated city of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast.
Lubinets said the soldiers may have been tortured before being killed. Oleh Kotenko, the government’s commissioner for missing persons, said the number of fatalities in Izium may be much higher than in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where at least 458 people were found dead after the liberation from the Russian occupation in April.
On Sept. 15, Ukrainian police said that they had found a mass burial site containing around 440 graves in Izium.
Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, told Kyiv Independent on Sept. 16 that the agency plans to send monitors to Izium.
“They (monitors) are aiming to go there to try to establish a bit more about what may have happened,” Throssell said. The UN would also look into the alleged 10 torture chambers that police official Ihor Taburets said were found by his personnel.
The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the bloc is "deeply shocked" by the mass graves with more than 440 bodies discovered in the city by the Ukrainian authorities.
“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been leaving a trail of blood and destruction across Ukraine,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Izium atrocities may be interpreted as war crimes, and there is a need to “build the evidence and document the atrocities that have been committed.”
