By Vitalii Hnidyi and Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey
HROZA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Residents of the Ukrainian village of Hroza wept beside coffins on Monday as they buried relatives and neighbours killed in one of the deadliest attacks in nearly 20 months of war.
The small community has been devastated by Thursday’s attack, in which Ukrainian officials said a Russian missile slammed into a cafe in Hroza as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier.
A woman dressed in black cried over the closed coffin of villager Tetiana Kharbaka, 52, before several men lowered it into a freshly dug grave.
A blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flew over one grave. Mounds of earth stood beside other graves dug for victims who have taken longer to identify.
“As of this morning, 49 people had been identified with the help of external features and express DNA tests,” a spokesperson for Kharkiv regional prosecutors was quoted as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency.
After the DNA tests, 11 bodies were handed out to family members on Monday, a Reuters reporter on the scene said.
Andrii Bilous said his brother Vitalii, 44, had not required the DNA testing because his body was not mutilated in the attack. He said he would have been there with his brother on Thursday if he had not had to go to work.
“Our friend, who was also our former neighbour, was being re-buried. He used to live in Hroza, for many years,” he said as he waited for his brother’s body in a morgue in Kharkiv, the nearest big city to Hroza.
“I was also going to go there but I had to go to work. Then a missile struck. I started calling Vitalii, but he didn’t pick up the phone.”
Before the war, Hroza had a population of about 500 people. The village was seized by Moscow in the early days of the February, 2022 invasion and recaptured by Kyiv the following September along with areas nearby.
A Kremlin spokesperson reiterated on Friday that Moscow does not attack civilian targets. A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said “the indications are that it was a Russian missile.”
(Writing by Olena Harmash, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
