New evidence of possible war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces in Mariupol is emerging, as the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance continues to hold out in the city despite efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare victory in the key port.
New satellite images show what appears to be a
mass grave
near Mariupol and Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of burying
up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians
to hide the carnage taking place in the ruined port city that is almost entirely under Russian control.
Maxar Technologies, a company that operates Earth observation satellites, said the images showed a massive, growing burial site with more than 200 new graves that began to appear towards the end of March and continued to expand into April.
The footage emerged just hours after Putin ordered his troops to block rather than storm the last Ukrainian holdout in the city.
A satellite image shows a general view of the cemetery and the expansion of new graves in Manhush, near Mariupol, Ukraine, April 3, 2022. Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS
The images show long rows of graves extending from an existing graveyard in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of "concealing their military crimes" by taking the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them there.
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“In Mariupol the greatest war crime of the 21st century was committed”
, declared the mayor of the Boychenko, adding that the fate of the remaining civilians and defenders in the city was in the hands of Putin, since the Azovstal steel plant seems now sealed, but still holding.
Boychenko called the Russian actions in the city "the new Babi Yar," referring to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.
"The bodies of the dead are brought in by trucks and dumped in heaps," Boychenko's aide Piotr Andryushchenko added on Telegram.
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The information could not be immediately confirmed, nor were local media reports quoted by Maxar describing Russian soldiers carrying bodies of people killed in Mariupol to the site.
The Kremlin did not react immediately.
When mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered in Bucha and other towns around kyiv following the withdrawal of Russian troops three weeks ago, Russia denied that its soldiers had killed civilians there and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.
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No humanitarian corridor will be opened
in Ukraine this Friday
due to "danger on the routes," Iryna Vereshchuk, the country's deputy prime minister, said on Friday, accusing Russia of blocking civilian evacuations.
While the United Nations noted that more than a quarter of the Ukrainian population currently needs urgent humanitarian assistance.
With information from AP and NBC News.
