The Ukrainian military says that its forces have retaken some towns in the Chernihiv region and that humanitarian aid is being delivered. The news agency RBK Ukraina says the road between Chernihiv and the capital of Kyiv is to reopen to some traffic later Monday. Chernihiv is a city 80 miles north of Kyiv and it had been cut off from shipments of food and other supplies for weeks. The mayor said Sunday that relentless Russian shelling had destroyed 70% of the city. In other areas recently retaken from Russian troops, Ukrainian officials say they have recovered hundreds of slain civilians in the past few days. Ukraine's prosecutor-general says the bodies of 410 civilians have been recovered from Kyiv-area towns.

___ KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: Ukraine accuses Russia of massacre, city strewn with bodies US, UK secret intelligence has unusually public role in Ukraine war Lithuania weans itself completely off Russian gas, 1st EU nation to do so Drug shortages persist in Russia after start of Ukraine war Pope still working on meeting Russian Orthodox patriarch OTHER DEVELOPMENTS: KYIV, Ukraine Ukraine's prosecutor-general says the bodies of 410 civilians have been removed from Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian troops. Iryna Venediktova says on Facebook that the bodies were recovered Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She says 140 of them have undergone examination by prosecutors and other specialists.

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Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says the mayor of the village of Motyzhyn in the Kyiv region was murdered while being held by Russian forces. Vereshchuk adds that there are 11 mayors and community heads in Russian captivity across Ukraine. In a video address Sunday, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the allegedly targeted killings of civilians in towns that the Russians occupied, calling the killers freaks who do not know how to do otherwise. He warns that more atrocities may be revealed if Russian forces are driven out of other occupied areas.

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International leaders have condemned the reported attacks in the Kyiv-area towns after harrowing accounts from civilians and graphic images of bodies with hands tied behind their backs. Russia's Defense Ministry has rejected the claims of atrocities against civilians in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv.

__ BALAKLIYA, Ukraine The governor of the Kharkiv region says Russian troops fired on a convoy of buses that was trying to evacuate patients from a hospital that had been heavily damaged in shelling a day earlier. The governor, Oleh Synyehubov, said Sunday that about 70 patients needed to be taken away from the damaged hospital in the town of Balakliya but that the buses were not able to enter the town. He said there was preliminary information that one of the bus drivers was killed. Balakliya is about 75 kilometers (45 miles) southeast of the city of Kharkiv, which has been heavily hit by Russian attacks. __ BERLIN Germany's defense minister says European officials should talk about halting gas supplies from Russia in light of the alleged attacks on civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Sunday night on German public broadcaster ARD that there must be a reaction. Such crimes must not go unanswered. So far, Germany and several other European governments have shied away from an immediate boycott of Russian natural gas over fears of the impact it would have on their economies. Europe gets 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia, and since the war, has scrambled to set out proposals to reduce its dependency. Russia is just as reliant on Europe, with oil and gas its dominant sector and paying for government operations.

Estimates of the impact of a gas boycott or embargo on Europe vary but most involve a substantial loss of economic output. __ JERUSALEM __ Israel's foreign minister is condemning the reported atrocities in Ukraine, saying deliberate harm to civilians is a war crime.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter that one cannot remain indifferent after seeing images from the town of Bucha near Ukraine capital. Israel has walked a tightrope since Russia invaded Ukraine, simultaneously denouncing the invasion while avoiding taking too strident a stance out of concern of angering Moscow, with whom it has security coordination in neighboring Syria. Israel has good relations with both countries and has mediated between them since the invasion on Feb. 24.

Lapid says that intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and strongly condemned it. ___ MOTYZHYN, Ukraine A resident says the mayor of the Ukrainian town of Motyzhyn was killed in an execution-style slaying along with her husband and son.

Another resident of the town 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Kyiv told the The Associated Press on Sunday that Russian troops targeted local officials in a bid to win them over and killed them if they did not collaborate. That man, Oleg, declined to give his full name for security reasons. The mayor, Olga Sukhenko, and her family were shot and thrown into a pit in a forest behind a plot of land with three houses where Russian forces had slept. A fourth body was not yet identified.

The mayor and her family had been reported by others as kidnapped by Russians on March 23 and taken in an unknown direction.

First Published:Apr 4, 2022 7:49 AM IST