Belgian prime minister reacts on killings in Bucha, Ukrainian town in Kiev suburbs

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo tweeted his indignation on Monday at the images that went around the world over the weekend, those of the corpses of civilians, some with their hands tied, in Bucha, a small town in the northwest from Kyiv.

These “horrible images” will never fade, De Croo said in his tweet, speaking of “war crimes” which “cannot go unpunished”.

He wrote that Belgium expresses its full support for the work the International Criminal Court (ICC) will face ahead investigating the situation in Ukraine and possible war crimes.

The European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also said in a statement the bloc will urgently work on further sanctions against Russia. “We stand in full solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in these somber hours for the whole world,” he said.

International photographers revealed mass graves and places with corpses, visibly civilians, in neighborhoods near Kyiv that had just been taken back from Russian troops. The fact that some had their hands and feet bound raises questions on the circumstances of their deaths.

The Kremlin rejects the accusations, affirming the images of corpses lining the streets were “fake”.

On the night from Sunday to Monday, Russian troops once again attacked the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa with rockets.

The Russian defence ministry confirmed the strike, declaring that "high-precision sea and air-based missiles destroyed an oil refinery and three storage facilities for fuel and lubricants near the city of Odessa, from which fuel was supplied to a group of Ukrainian troops in the direction of Mykolaiv".

An officer from the Southern Regional Command of the Ukrainian army, Vladislav Nazarov, said in a statement that the Odessa region is among Russia’s priority targets. « The enemy continues its sneaky practice of striking sensitive infrastructure, » he said.

Last weekend, several rockets had already been unloaded at the city of more than a million inhabitants on the Black Sea. 

AFP PHOTO RONALDO SCHEMIDT: Ukainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (3rdL) stands in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, on April 4, 2022. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 3, 2022 the Russian leadership was responsible for civilian killings in Bucha, outside Kyiv, where bodies were found lying in the street after the town was retaken by the Ukrainian army.