\n Ukrainian investigators began to exhume a mass grave in Bucha on Friday, opening the early stages of what police say will be a war crimes case targeting Russian troops who occupied the Kyiv commuter town.\n<\/p>\n
\n The grave -- a long deep trench in the mud behind a gold-domed church -- was used by Ukrainians to bury neighbours they claim were killed at the hands of Russian armed forces which arrived on February 26.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Friday, crews wearing white forensic overalls were using a flatbed lorry fixed with a mechanical crane to remove corpses from the ditch.\n<\/p>\n
\n The bodies were laid out on the ground and inspected by teams, including police officers poring over paperwork.\n<\/p>\n
\n Most of the remains outside the grave, cordoned off by tape, were zipped inside black plastic body bags.\n<\/p>\n
\n One man at work was wearing a gilet marked with the words \"war crimes prosecutor\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Niebitov said there were 40 bodies in the grave, including two members of Ukraine's military forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said bodies bore gunshot wounds, buttressing claims they were explicitly targeted by soldiers rather than collateral damage from air strikes and artillery fire.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I can define these events as a war crime,\" he said. \"International law defines killing of civilians during any kind of military conflict as a war crime.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These bodies will be extracted for the court investigation, they will be delivered to undergo forensic medical examination and an autopsy.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The town of Bucha has become the growing focus of allegations of war criminality against troops ordered to invade Ukraine by President Vladimir Putin on 24 February.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Saturday an AFP team discovered 20 dead bodies on a single street in the town, home to around 37,000 before the war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine says Russian troops executed civilians.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Kremlin has denied any hand in the killings and denounced photographs depicting the scene as fakery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukrainian investigators began to exhume a mass grave in Bucha on Friday, opening the early stages of what police say will be a war crimes case targeting Russian troops who occupied the Kyiv commuter town. The grave -- a long deep trench in the mud behind a gold-domed church -- was used by Ukrainians to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-90353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n