More than 1,200 people were found dead in the kyiv region (Ukraine) after the withdrawal of the Russian military. For the families as for the forensic scientists, the long work of identification is trying.
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In one of the two mortuaries in kyiv (Ukraine), two coffins are side by side. “My father-in-law was called Volodymyr Tcherednitchenko and my mother-in-law, Nadia Miakouchka”, explains Artem, alone in front of the two coffins. Like them, 1,220 people were found dead in the kyiv region after the withdrawal of Russian troops, the Ukrainian prosecutor general announced on Sunday April 10, almost two weeks after the departure of the soldiers. The balance sheet will undoubtedly increase in the coming days because families are still looking for their loved ones and the work of identifying the victims is still in progress.
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Gazing frozen, sobs contained, Ertem came to recognize the bodies of his parents-in-law. “We learned that they had been killed on March 24. We looked for them in all the morgues and then we knew they were here”, he says. The funeral takes place in the afternoon in Irpin, one of the occupied towns in the greater suburbs of kyiv most affected by the fighting.
“My in-laws didn’t want to leave because my in-law had a sore foot. A tank fired at their house. They ran out and were killed by automatic weapon fire. The bodies stayed in front of their house.”
Artem, Ukrainian whose in-laws diedat franceinfo
These bullet-riddled corpses now lie in coffins in the back of a utility. These are the 147th and 148th casualties recorded here since the end of the Battle of kyiv. The identification work is methodical. “We use DNA fingerprints, fingerprints and we look at whether there are any particular traces such as tattoos or scars”explains Vadim, medical examiner.
Families then come to pick up their loved ones. A trying stage for Vadim. “All these people died because of the war. They are innocent people who do not deserve such a fate. It is difficult, I am a human like the others.” In front of the morgue, there are still two trucks with, in each of the trailers, about fifty corpses in body bags to be identified, then returned to the families.