Ukraine City Buries Dead in Mass Grave [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• A mass grave at a cemetery on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine has been made to bury dead bodies.
• The dead includes soldiers and civilian victims of Russian shelling.
• City officials were advising residents to “cover the body of a dead family member and tie up the hands and the legs and leave it outside.”

Residents of Mariupol, Ukraine, have begun burying their dead in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city already besieged by Russian forces for nine days, the Associated Press reports.

More than 70 bodies, wrapped in carpets or bags, have been put into a trench 80 feet long since Tuesday, according to the AP, noting gloved workers quickly making the sign of the cross before pushing the dead into the giant hole in the ground.

About half of those now buried there were killed by Russian bombs, missiles or artillery while the rest died of natural causes.

Mariupol, a coastal city of almost 450,000, has been without power, heat and water in sub-freezing temperatures.

Residents are reportedly collecting and boiling snow to drink.

A 6-year-old girl died of dehydration on Tuesday after her mother was killed, The New York Times reports.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was the “first time in decades, apparently, since the Nazi invasion” that a child died of dehydration in Mariupol.

Russian forces also hit a children’s hospital and maternity ward there on Wednesday. The city council said it was struck by “several bombs” and that the damage was “colossal.”

About 1,300 civilians have been killed there since the Russian invasion began, the deputy mayor Serhiy Orlov told the BBC. He added that the mass grave was necessary because of the high numbers of dead. Attacks continue and it’s too dangerous for residents to bury loved ones in private graves.

“Really, we can’t calculate how many deaths we have — I mean three to four times more. We are not even able to count how many people on the streets have been killed by bombing and artillery,” Orlov told CNN in separate comments. “We do not know how many, because we cannot collect all the bodies and we cannot count.”

Marina Levinchuk, who was able to flee Mariupol days ago, said city officials were advising residents what to do with a body if a family member has died.

“Just put the body outside, cover it, tie up the hands and the legs and leave it outside,” she told the Times of the instructions.

Repeated efforts to establish a cease-fire that would allow Mariupol residents to flee through a “humanitarian corridor” have failed.

Dmytro Gurin, a member of Ukraine’s parliament from Mariupol, told the BBC he fears people there will starve.

“The next thing will be the hunger,” he said. “This is not war any more. This is not army against army. It is Russia against humanity.”

Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.

“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,” he told the European Union in a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.” 

Source: PEOPLE