At least twenty corpses line a street in the now liberated city of Bautza

An AFP reporter reported that the bodies of at least 20 people were dressed in civilian clothes on Saturday on a street in Bautista, northwest of Kiev, where Ukrainian troops had withdrawn from Russian forces.

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The hands of one of the men were tied and the bodies were scattered several hundred feet.

The cause of their death could not be ascertained immediately but one had a major head injury.

In recent days, Russian forces have retreated from several locations near the capital following a failed attempt to encircle the capital.

Ukraine declared Bootsa “liberated,” but the city was destroyed by fighting: AFP journalists were able to see gaps in apartment buildings caused by bombs and the bodies of numerous cars.

Sixteen of the twenty bodies found on a street in Boucha were on the sidewalk or on the edge of the sidewalk. Three were in the middle of the road and another in the yard of the house.

An open Ukrainian passport lay on the floor next to a man with his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth.

The dead men were all wearing winter coats, jackets or tracksuit tops, jeans or jogging bottoms and sneakers or boots. Two of them were lying next to the bicycles, the other next to the abandoned car.

Some were lying on their backs, others on their stomachs.

The skin on the face looked like wax, suggesting that the corpses may have been there for at least several days.

“In Boutcha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves because it is not possible to do so in the three cemeteries of the municipality, all of which are within the range of Russian soldiers’ firing,” Mr. Fedorouk said on the phone.