An unclaimed body is placed in a coffin in the Bucha cemetery in Ukraine. Photo Laura Boushnak / The New York Times.
BUCHA, Ukraine – The city of Bucha has begun burying unidentified victims of the Russian occupation, despite months of investigations aimed at identifying the dead, reuniting them with their families and giving them a proper burial.
In March, Russian soldiers turned Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other nearby towns into the sites of some of the better documented atrocities from the war.
the bodies of more than 400 deadcollected after the soldiers’ withdrawal, they remained in the morgues as officials tried to determine who was killed and how.
A coffin with an unclaimed body awaits burial in Bucha Cemetery, Ukraine. Photo Laura Boushnak / The New York Times.
In a briefing on Monday, city council officials announced the latest official tally:
They were found 458 bodies in the metropolitan area of Bucha, inclusive 86 women and nine children.
The work has been slow and the bodies keep coming.
As a result, on Tuesday, 15 unclaimed bodies were lowered into an empty space at the edge of the city cemetery, the first of several burials planned for this week.
Only one body was identified by name, Bucha’s deputy mayor Mykhailyna Skoryk-Shkarivska said; the others were marked with numbers.
Gravediggers removed body bags from a truck and placed them in coffins before lowering them to the ground in a row of mechanically dug pits.
A Orthodox priest he blessed the place while two people sang the funeral rite.
About 50 bodies remain unclaimed, many of them still unidentified, Skoryk-Shkarivska said.
A coffin with an unclaimed body is lowered into a grave in the Bucha cemetery in Ukraine. Photo Laura Boushnak / The New York Times.
And some bodies were so burnt Her gender has not yet been confirmed.
The 15 buried on Tuesday died in Bucha and several nearby towns, he added.
Among them were six unidentified men found in June in a mass grave in a forest not far from Bucha, as well as an unidentified woman burned in her car.
Skoryk-Shkarivska said city hall officials had been asking for permission to bury the unidentified remains for weeks, but ongoing investigations had delayed the process.
There is still a chance to identify the bodies why DNA samples were taken and archived in a police database.
But the identification process was complicated by the DNA matching process, which can take from one to six monthsas well as the fact that many relatives are now refugees, Skoryk-Shkarivska said.
“Half of the population has returned,” he said, “but the other half is still absent.”
So far, DNA tests have helped identify 17 victimsSkoryk-Shkarivska added.
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Oleksandr Chubko and Carlotta Gall
Source: Clarin
