Images of the Maxar company show long rows of graves, more than 200, close to an existing cemetery in the city of Manhouch.
Le Monde with AP , AFP and Reuters
Satellite images, published Thursday, April 21 by the American company Maxar Technologies, show “the existence of common pits in northwestern Manhouch”, a village 20 kilometers from Maroupol. According to Maxar, the images reveal long rows of graves, more than 200, close to an existing cemetery. Maxar, cited by the Associated Press press agency, says the graves were dug at the end of March and enlarged in recent weeks.
In a message Posted on Telegram, Vadym Boïtchenko The Mayor of Maroupol, accuses the Russians of “hiding their military crimes”. In Manhouch, “the occupants would have buried between 3,000 and 9,000 residents,” he wrote. “They dig holes of thirty meters and bring the bodies of the inhabitants of Maroupol in trucks”. It believes that Russian bombings have made at least 20,000 people in Maroupol since the beginning of the headquarters.
The first rows of pits of a dimension of about 1.80 meters over 3 meters appeared on captured images between March 23 and 26. The satellite images captured two weeks later, on April 6, show the expansion of the site where more than 200 pits have been dug enclosed near a plot of about 4,000 m².
“Maroupol is the largest war crime of the XXI e century. It is the new Babi Yar”, has written Vadym Boïtchenko, with reference to the “good women’s ravine”, at kyiv, where 33,771 Jews were executed with a bullet in the neck, on September 29 and 30, 1941, before more than a hundred thousand people – Jews, Gypsies, supporters, prisoners … – be killed, at the same Location, until November 1943.
The length of the manhouch pits is 300 meters. By way of comparison, in a common pit near the church of 14 meters long, the bodies of 70 people had been found, recalls on its side Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty , which started to investigate These common pits.
The Russian army accused
In mid-March, in different areas of Maroupol and its suburbs, public services buried about 5,000 people. According to prudent estimates, the total number of victims of the Russian army is 22,000 deaths.
The United Nations and the Red Cross consider it impossible to estimate the assessment of civilian victims at this stage, but think it is in thousands. Russia said to have evacuated 140,000 civilians from Maroupol. Ukraine accuses the deportation, at least for some of them, which would constitute a war crime.
Russia did not comment on these discoveries. When hinges and hundreds of dead civilians have been discovered in Bantha and other cities around kyiv after the withdrawal of Russian troops three weeks ago, Russian officials have denied that their soldiers killed civilians there. and accused Ukraine to stage these atrocities.
The United Nations has accused the Russian Army of Shares “with Ukraine ‘s war crimes from the invasion, February 24, including bombing killing civilians and destroying schools and hospitals.