NOW that the fighting has stopped, people in the town of Rubizhne have started exhuming bodies that were hastily buried during battles between the forces of Ukraine and Russia.
Men with spades removed sandy soil on Friday (August 12) outside a damaged apartment block in Rubizhne, a town of 50,000 in Ukraine that was captured by troops from the Russian-backed Luhansk People's Republic after lengthy fighting that started in March.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he calls his "special military operation" against Ukraine in February.
Lilia Ai-Talatini, 48, watched as the workers pulled out a blanket covering her mother, who had been quickly interred after attacks that started in March and divided the town in two.
Ai-Talatini said she had ended up on the Ukrainian side and it took her 10 days to reach her parents' apartment, which was on the Russian side.
"Mother was already dying ... her hands were blue, her complexion was sallow, there were circles under her eyes," she said. "The next day mother passed away."
She and her husband had no spades and therefore, as shells flew, had to drag the corpse to an open trench in the ground.
“It's easier for me because she's not outside ... buried in inhuman conditions. Now she is going to the cemetery, we have a plot there," she said.
Anna Soroka, an official with the Luhansk People's Republic involved in the search for graves, said a team had been working in Rubizhne for 10 days and exhumed 104 sets of remains.
"It's clear that shrapnel wounds predominate but there are also bullet wounds," she said, estimating there were a total of 500 unofficial graves in the city.
A total of six bodies were dug up close to the badly damaged apartment building where Ai-Talatini's mother lived and placed into a van before being examined by specialists elsewhere in the town.
Boris Kovalyov, a forensic expert from the southern Russian region of Rostov, said examples of genetic material would be stored to help identify unknown corpses.
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