PUMPKIN, Ukraine (AP) – A blackened body had its hands raised in supplication and its face twisted into a horrible scream. Another’s skull had a bullet hole in his left temple. A small blackened child’s leg can be seen in the tangle of charred bodies piled together in Bucha, a city outside Kyiv, where evidence of murders and torture has emerged since the withdrawal of Russian forces.
The six burnt and blackened corpses were just the latest horrific scene from Bucha, as world leaders demanded that Russia be held accountable, including for possible war crimes.
It is unclear who the people were and under what circumstances they were killed.
The pile of bodies seen by Associated Press reporters on Tuesday was right next to a residential street, near a colorful and empty playground visible to passersby as they cautiously went outside to collect aid.
In a nearby house, the twisted and bloodied body of a young man shot to death lay at the entrance to the basement. At least four other bodies lay scattered in the street, one with its eye removed, apparently from a bullet.
“It’s awful,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky said at the scene, including other journalists. The minister said Russian President Vladimir Putin should “go to hell”.
Andriy Nebitov, police chief in the Kyiv region, noted that one of the charred bodies was a child.
The AP saw dozens of dead bodies around Bucha, where Russian forces withdrew in the past week. The images, including some with their hands tied, terrified the world. Many victims appear to have been shot at close range, some in the head. At least two were handcuffed.
High-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, while Russian forces were in the city.
Ukrainian authorities say the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in cities around Kyiv that have been seized by Russian forces in recent days. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office described a room found in Bucha as a “torture chamber.”
The horrific images of battered and burned corpses left in the open or hastily buried have led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, especially to halt fuel imports from Russia. Germany and France have reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they are spies, and US President Joe Biden has said Putin should be tried for war crimes.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky left Kyiv this week for his first reported trip since the start of the war nearly six weeks ago to see for himself what he called “genocide” and “war crimes” in Bucha.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague launched an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
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