The corpse lies with its hands clasped, as if in prayer. In reality, says the morgue employee, he was throwing molotov cocktails when the Russians caught him. They tied his hands and executed him.
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Chilling images from the morgue of Mykolaiv, a city on the shores of the Black Sea, under Russian fire for days. Outside, in the courtyard of the forensic institute where the morgue is located, the snow falls steadily on corpses wrapped in gray plastic body bags, waiting to be evacuated.
In the dilapidated and dilapidated premises, other bodies are placed on the floor, for lack of space. The insidious smell of death, mixed with that of a sweetish disinfectant, is everywhere.
Here, there are the victims of war, civilians and soldiers, but also the deaths of natural causes.
Doctors perform autopsies in questionable hygienic conditions. You have to step over naked bodies to access the cold room, where the corpses of victims of a bombardment that occurred a few days earlier in Otchakiv, in the Mykolaiv region, are piled up.
Vladimir, one of the morgue employees, lights cigarette after cigarette. “I have never seen such a thing. We thought the worst thing that could happen to us here was car accidents,” he said, shaking his head. He and his colleagues work tirelessly.
Crossing the courtyard again, he opens a door onto a nightmarish spectacle. About thirty corpses are placed on the ground. Two soldiers in fatigues, one gutted, are even stacked on top of each other.
“They are so young, younger than my nephew,” Vladimir squeals. At the back of the room, there is also a Russian soldier, he claims. “We keep them away.”
AFP
We also guess the bodies of civilians, still in the same room.
An employee gently removes the chain around the neck of a corpse, which will be used for identification.
Mykolaiv and its region are the scene of heavy fighting and Russian bombardment, but the Ukrainians are resisting and even took over the airport from the north a few days ago. The city is strategic because it is the last lock before the great port city of Odessa.
“Since the beginning of the war, we have received 120 bodies, including 80 soldiers and 30 civilians,” says the director of the forensic institute, Olga Dierugina, with a weary look, a woolen vest slipped over her white coat. and a pompom hat on the head. Among the civilian victims, the youngest was a three-year-old child and the oldest a septuagenarian, she continues.
Some bodies are difficult to identify, especially among the 19 bodies that arrived from Otchakiv two days ago. DNA samples are taken, experts note tattoos, jewelry.
The bodies of the soldiers are sent back to their region of origin. “They are all very young, born in 1990, in 2000…”, breathes Olga Dierugina. “How do I feel today?”. Silence. Then her face suddenly sags. “Fear. We all have children”.
This female doctor tries hard not to break down, wipes away her tears. “Here in Mykolaiv, it’s still fine, but my parents are in Chernihiv (in the north), they can’t be evacuated”.
At the forensic institute, 15 of his colleagues fled to the west, about sixty continue to work, including about twenty in the morgue. “I will never thank them enough”, resumes Olga Dierugina. According to her, the situation is still under control in Mykolaiv, but “we are heading straight for a humanitarian disaster if this continues”.
Outside the morgue, a few families wait silently under the snow.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca