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Residents of the Ukrainian town of Izium searched for dead relatives in a nearby wooded grave site as emergency workers continued to exhume what they said were hundreds of bodies found after Russian forces were driven from the region.
The causes of death for those at the grave site, discovered last week, have not yet been established, although residents say some died in an airstrike. Ukrainian authorities have said at least one of the bodies had tied hands and rope marks on the neck.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said investigators had discovered new evidence of torture used against the people buried in Izium, one of dozens of towns retaken in the northeastern Kharkiv after a lightning advance earlier this month.
"More than 10 torture chambers have already been found in the liberated areas of Kharkiv region, in various cities and towns," Zelenskiy said in a video address late on Saturday.
"Torture was a widespread practice in the occupied territories. That's what the Nazis did - this is what (the Russians) do," he added. "They will answer in the same way - both on the battlefield and in courtrooms."
Clutching a neatly written list of names and numbers, resident Volodymyr Kolesnyk stepped between graves looking for relatives he said were killed in an airstrike on an apartment building shortly before Izium fell to Russian forces in April.
Kolesnyk said he knew his relatives had been taken to the burial site and were in some of the graves marked with numbers.
He paused before a cross marked with the number 199 and after checking the list given to him by a local funeral company that dug the graves, carefully hung a small sign on it bearing the name of Yurii Yakovenko, his cousin.
