Horror in Bucha: Ukrainian forces recovered the city and found hundreds of bodies

Nearly 300 people have been buried in a mass grave in Bucha, a city on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, its mayor told AFP on Saturday after the Ukrainian army regained control of Russia's key city.

“In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves,” Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP by telephone. According to him, the streets of the city, heavily destroyed, are full of corpses.

There were bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, said the AFP agency. The bodies were scattered over several hundred meters, with no known cause of death so far.

Russian troops recently withdrew from several locations near Kiev, having failed in their attempt to surround the capital. The Ukrainian authorities proclaimed that Bucha had been “liberated”.

The fighting and bombing left an apocalyptic panorama, with huge holes in residential buildings and wrecked cars in various parts of the city.

Sixteen of the 20 bodies were on or next to a street sidewalk. Three were in the middle of the road and one in the courtyard of a house. A Ukrainian passport was located near the tied corpse.

All the dead wore civilian clothes: coats, coats, jeans or jogging pants and sneakers or boots. Two were lying in the vicinity of bicycles and another near an abandoned car. Some were face down and others were on their backs.

The faces of the deceased had a waxy appearance, which could indicate that they had been in the place for several days.

On Saturday, Pope Francis condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Malta, where he plans to go at the invitation of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky, and asked for a response “shared” in the face of the growing migration emergency.

In a speech at the presidential palace in Valletta, at the beginning of a two-day visit to this Mediterranean island, the Argentine supreme pontiff lamented the “glacial wind of war” coming from “Eastern Europe”.

“Some powerful, sadly locked in the anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, provokes and fosters conflicts,” he added in an unequivocal allusion to Russian President Vladimir Putin, albeit without naming him.

Francis also denounced “the seductions of autocracy” and “new imperialisms”, which bring the risk of “extended cold war that can stifle the lives of peoples and entire generations.”

Asked by the press about a possible trip to Ukraine, the holy father replied: “Yes, it's on the table.”

The 85-year-old Argentine pontiff was invited by Zelensky to play the role of mediator in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia and visit his country invaded by Russian troops since the end of February.

He was also invited by the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, to “show his compassion” with the Ukrainian people

Faced with the conflict in Ukraine, which has led more than 4.1 million of its inhabitants to flee the country, the pope called for “broad and shared responses”.

“Only some countries cannot bear the whole problem, while others remain indifferent,” he told Maltese President George Vella and the diplomatic corps.

In addition to the reference to Ukraine, it was a criticism of the migration policy of the European Union (EU), including Malta, accused of closing its ports to NGOs that help migrants trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean.

(With information from AFP)

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