Volunteers place the bodies of the deceased on the side of the road. /
The victims have been found inside seven bullet-riddled vehicles in Kupiansk as they fled fighting in late September.
Barely 24 hours after the Russian bombardment of a humanitarian convoy in Zaporizhia that left around thirty dead and more than a hundred injured, the macabre discovery of an attack of similar characteristics came to light this Saturday in the town of Kupiansk, belonging to the northern province of Kharkov. According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the lifeless bodies of 24 people were found inside seven vehicles riddled with bullets. The events, of which there was no record until now, would have occurred on September 25, the region’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The victims are “civilians who were trying to escape the bombing,” the governor of Kharkov, Oleg Sinegubov, denounced on his Telegram channel, for whom “this is a brutality that has no justification.” “The Russians shot at civilians at close range,” he added as the kyiv authorities announced the opening of an investigation. The first hypotheses suggest that the Russian forces expelled last Sunday from the southern town of Kyrylivka – some 70 kilometers east of Kharkov – would be behind the massacre.
Sinegubov specified that the bodies, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, were located this Saturday in the so-called “gray zone” between the lines of the two Armies. Specifically between the Svatove province, occupied by the Russian forces in Lugansk, and Kupiansk, in the Kharkov region, which was liberated by the kyiv troops at the beginning of last month during their great offensive in the east of the country, although it was still the scene of fighting An official from the Kupiansk Emergency Medical Care Department confirmed the casualty figures in a video shared by official Ukrainian channels.
The SBU advanced that the seven vehicles were fired upon by a Russian group that used firearms to attack the column as civilians tried to flee the fighting. The agency, to record the facts, published images of the destroyed cars, some burned beyond recognition, on a road next to a railway and what appeared to be charred remains of people. Two bodies were sitting in the driver’s seats of their cars; one was holding the steering wheel.
The discovery took place just one day after the Russian Army bombed a convoy of vehicles that was traveling to the Zaporizhia region to help families and friends flee hours before Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of this territory and the Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk provinces. In the last balance offered this Saturday, the authorities put the fatalities at 30, as well as the injured at 118. They were “all civilians”, members of a “humanitarian convoy”, the head of the military authority in the area, Oleksandr Staruj, said the day before.
hospitalized
The Zaporizhia Police detailed this Saturday that among the deceased there are two minors and a soldier who was on duty at the roadblock and was affected by shrapnel. Likewise, 81 people remain hospitalized in various health centers, including a three-year-old girl. Some have very serious injuries, so it is not ruled out that the final number of fatalities will increase.
The attack in Zaporizhia, one of the bloodiest in memory since the start of the war on February 24, occurred when “people were lining up to leave, to pick up their relatives or to receive help,” he said on Friday. a witness to local media. The place, already very busy as it is the concentration point for vehicles entering and leaving this territory occupied by the Russians since the beginning of March, welcomed a large crowd of people at the time the missiles hit.
The desire to flee immediately had taken hold of the population since in a matter of hours Putin was preparing to declare the accession of the territory, which, according to Kremlin legislation, would make all its inhabitants Russian citizens. The subsequent images were disheartening and bear great similarity to those that were released this Saturday from Kupiansk. Some of the deceased could still be seen clinging to the flyers while a trail of blood, bodies and belongings lay on the asphalt.
