Ukrainian authorities continued to gather the dead after the apparent slaughter of civilians in Kyiv’s northern suburbs Wednesday, as startling photos of a beloved Ukrainian mayor executed alongside her family made her a symbol of Russian cruelty.
Investigators have collected bodies — many with close-range gunshot wounds or severe burns, several with their hands still bound — throughout Bucha, where the dead have been found in mass graves and strewn across the city streets.
Photos from Bucha on Wednesday showed dozens of body bags in a local cemetery, as police began to identify the dead before sending them on to area morgues.
Dead civilians, clad in jeans and winter coats, wearing sneakers, could be seen through the open zippers of a handful of body bags as police went about their work.
Over 60 bodies have been collected in Bucha over the past day.
In Motyzhyn, 30 miles west of Kyiv, residents still grappled with the death of mayor Olha Sukhenko, who was discovered in a shallow grave two days ago beside the bodies of her husband, Ihor, and their 25-year-old son, Oleksander.
Residents carry the body of a civilian woman from a grave, according to residents Yaraslova was killed by Russian soldiers on April 4, 2022.REUTERS/Gleb Garanich 
A Ukrainian policeman walks by a pit in the village of Motyzhyn, Ukraine where the bodies of the mayor of the village, Olga Sukhenko, her husband and her son were found. AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda
Harrowing photos showed the bodies of the family, contorted in death, buried alongside another unidentified Ukrainian.
“Those are my relatives in that pit,” Ihor Radchenko, the Sukhenkos’ son-in-law, told the Wall Street Journal Monday as authorities worked to exhume the bodies. “Why were they killed? Because they were Ukrainians.”
Motyzhyn residents told the paper that Sukhenko had been instrumental to the town’s resilience during its month-long occupation.
Motyzhyn Mayor Olga Sukhenk was reportedly killed by Russian forces. Facebook/Olga Sukhenk
She helped bring food and medicine to those in need, and was part of a resistance effort to report Russian troop movements back to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.
“She was the best person until her last minute, Mykola Kurach, a local leader in the volunteer defense force, told the paper.
In Makariv, a few miles northwest of Motyzhyn, officials said they’d found 20 bodies in and around the town.
Body bags lined up for identification at a cemetery in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 6, 2022.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images 
Mass graves have been seen in Bucha amid the Russian invasion.AP Photo/Felipe Dana 
Many of the dead were civilians killed by Russian troops.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
Rescue workers in Borodyanka, where Ukrainian citizens reportedly held off a Russian advance last month, said they were looking for bodies in the rubble of destroyed apartment buildings.
In light of the gruesome trail left behind by retreating Russian troops in the north, Ukrainian officials urged civilians to evacuate from the east, where Kremlin forces are expected to advance.
Officials in Sloviansk, a city in the Donetsk oblast to the east, said Wednesday that local bank branches were shutting down, as were postal and pension operations.
Police carry the body of a civilian found dead in Bucha on April 5, 2022.AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky 
A police officer near six unidentified bodies in a residential area in Bucha on April 5, 2022.AP Photo/Felipe Dana 
Workers bring coffins for the dead bodies after they are identified.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images 
ID cards on top of a body after it was identified.Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
Authorities in the eastern Luhansk oblast also urged civilians to evacuate westward, as Russian shelling struck high-rise buildings in the city of Severodonetsk.
With Post wires