Representatives of the Lugansk People’s Republic inter-departmental working group on the search for burial sites of Ukrainian aggression victims, their identification and perpetuation of their memory, retrieved the remains of nine people from a makeshift grave in the Slavyanoserbsk district, a member of the group said.
The grave near the Slavyanoserbsk cemetery was examined and opened. It contained nine unidentified bodies of LPR residents killed in 2014, she said.
“Complete remains of eight people and fragments of the ninth body have been recovered, and samples have been taken for DNA tests. It was our main objectives because there’s much information on the missing persons in the Slavyanoserbsk district for whom their relatives search, head of the inter-departmental working group, LPR First Deputy Foreign Minister Anna Soroka said.
“All the victims are civilians who died of gunshot wounds or mine blast trauma. After their identification, an investigation will be carried out. The remains will be re-buried,” Soroka said.
According to the Inter-departmental working group, standard funerals were not possible back then due to the massive strikes at Slavyanoserbsk. The bodies were put in make-do coffins to be buried in a hastily excavated pit. Plastic bottles with the numbers assigned in the morgue were found near the bodies.
Many militiamen and civilians were killed in July, when the Ukrainian army made an attempt to encircle Lugansk. The bodies lay in scorching heat for several days because of unceasing shelling. They were gradually collected and taken to the Lugansk morgue, from which we took away the dead residents of our district," said Yevgeny Yepichenko who was first deputy head of the Slavyanoserbsk district administration in 2014.
The first exhumation of a Ukrainian aggression victim by the working group took place in the village of Sabovka, Slavyanoserbsk district, on August 11. *i*s
