Searching for loved ones among the corpses of Bucha

Bucha, Ukraine, Apr 23 (EFE).- Alina nervously waits for a truck to unload dozens of corpses at Bucha’s morgue. She fears the worst as she has not heard from her father since the Russian troops entered the Ukrainian town.

“Every day they bring new corpses and I come here to see if I can find my father (…) let’s see if I can find him among all these dead people,” the 24-year-old told Efe.

She is one of the dozens of Bucha’s residents trying to find the whereabouts of their beloved ones.

After reviewing the corpses, some of them with signs of torture, the young woman leaves the morgue and calls her mother: “I have not seen his body… perhaps he is alive,” she says.

The bodies of 420 civilians have already been found in Bucha, a small and wealthy town where the Russian troops massacred civilians before their withdrawal, according to Ukrainian authorities.

In a bid to identify and deliver the bodies to their families, the town council has drawn up a list with the names of the people who died during the occupation and the little data that has been compiled about the unidentified bodies.

An information point has been set up for people to find out if authorities have found their relatives.

Olexi is looking for the body of her best friend’s husband.

The husband was shot dead by Russians while fleeing Bucha and buried by neighbors in the garden of the couple’s house, with his name written on a sign around his neck, Olexi said.

“He is buried in the garden, but they still don’t know exactly where. They are still looking for the body,” Olexi added.

A couple of coroners run restlessly from one side of the morgue in anticipation of the dozens of newly-discovered corpses, which need to be examined. They pause only briefly for a couple of puffs on a cigarette.

It is overwhelming for the experts who are now handling more bodies in a day than an entire month before the war, the adviser to the mayor of Bucha, Mikhailiya Skoryk, told Efe. EFE

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