MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Under relentless Russian bombardment, workers in the besieged southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol hastily and unceremoniously bury dozens of dead Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in a mass grave.
With morgues overflowing and more corpses left in homes, city officials have decided they can’t wait to hold individual burials.
A deep trench about 25 meters (27 yards) long dug in an old cemetery in the city center is being filled with bodies collected by municipal social workers from morgues and private homes.
Some are brought wrapped in carpets or plastic bags. Forty came on Tuesday, another 30 so far on Wednesday. Among them are civilians who suffered from the shelling of the city and soldiers, as well as civilians who died from illness or natural causes.
Other city workers also bring in the bodies, so the number of those buried is rapidly increasing, and the total number of deaths in the long grave is now unclear.
The workers are quickly baptized, placing the bodies in a mass grave. There are no family members or other mourners to say goodbye.
The work is done efficiently and unceremoniously because of the constant danger. On Tuesday, shells hit the cemetery itself, interrupting burials and damaging the wall.
The city plans to close this grave on Thursday if the shelling stops long enough for workers to do so.
At the cemetery gate, a woman asked if her mother was among those buried in the trench. She said she left her body three days earlier outside the mortuary with a paper label attached with her name on it. Her mother is buried there, workers told the woman, who declined to give her name.
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