A mass grave in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 3, 2022. Ukrainian troops are finding brutalized bodies and widespread destruction in the suburbs of Kyiv, sparking new calls for a war crimes investigation and sanctions against Russia (AP)
Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's prosecutor-general, says on Facebook that the bodies were removed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. She says 140 of them have undergone examination by prosecutors and other specialists.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says Sunday that the mayor of the village of Motyzhyn, in the Kyiv region, was murdered while being held by Russian forces.
Vereshchuk added that there are 11 mayors and community heads in Russian captivity across Ukraine.
In a video address on Sunday, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the allegedly targeted killings of civilians in towns the Russians occupied and called them ``freaks who do not know how to do otherwise.''
He warned that more atrocities may be revealed if Russian forces are driven out of other occupied areas.
International leaders have condemned the reported attacks on the Kyiv-area towns after harrowing accounts from civilians and graphic images of bodies with hands tied behind their backs.
Zelenskyy has said the Russian attacks in Ukraine amount to genocide. Russia's Defense Ministry has rejected the claims of atrocities against civilians in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv.
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