Five children’s bodies were recovered from a mass grave in a town formerly controlled by Russian soldiers.
According to investigators, four of the children were buried in a mass burial at a cemetery in Lyman, while another was exhumed from a makeshift grave dug by his mother in their yard.
It has been preliminarily established they all died from shrapnel wounds as a result of Russian shelling, the National Police of Ukraine said in a statement posted to Telegram.
Policemen retrieved girls born in 2021, 2019, and 2008, and boys born in 2011 and 2012 from the mass graves.
The two youngest girls are sisters.
After the forensic examination, the children will be reburied.
“Investigative actions have been ongoing for two weeks in Lyman — at the site of the largest mass burial in the de-occupied part of Donetsk region. Investigative teams work continuously, searching for and interviewing relatives, establishing the history of all the dead,” the statement said.
As of the morning of this morning, 35 military personnel and 131 civilians were exhumed in the Kramatorsk district.
Among the civilians were 67 men, 56 women, and five children. The gender of six people is unknown.