Hungary Church Group Divers Aid To Ukraine’s Mourning Bucha
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A Hungarian church group has delivered the first foreign aid to Ukraine’s mourning city of Bucha, where mass graves were discovered after Russian troops left, an official said.
The 24 tonnes shipment by the Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA) included food, hygiene products, and generators, confirmed the organization’s director László Lehel. “HIA received a warm welcome in Bucha, Irpin, and Borodianka on Thursday,” he told Hungarian radio. “Locals said we were the first organization to supply foreign aid.”
The aid arrived in Bucha near Kyiv as forensic doctors investigated possible war crimes there.
On Sunday, experts said that dozens of civilians who died during the Russian occupation of Bucha were killed by tiny metal arrows from shells of a type fired by Russian artillery.
Pathologists and coroners carrying out postmortems on bodies of mass graves in this region north of Kyiv reportedly found small metal darts, called fléchettes, embedded in people’s heads and chests.
“We found several really thin, nail-like objects in the bodies of men and women, and so did others of my colleagues in the region,” says Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor.
“It is very hard to find those in the body; they are too thin. The majority of these bodies come from the Bucha-Irpin region,” he told The Guardian newspaper.
MANY KILLED
Ukrainian authorities claim thousands of civilians have been deliberately killed by Russian troops across the country, though Moscow denies targeting civilians.
Lehel said HIA also expands its relief to other troubled areas of Ukraine, including near the besieged port city of Mariupol, where authorities claim 20,000 people died in Russian attacks.
He stressed his group worked initially in the Transcarpathia region, where more than 150,000 ethnic Hungarians live, according to official estimates.
HIA expanded to seven districts of Ukraine after the outbreak of the war supplying aid to 208 refugee shelters in Transcarpathia alone, Lehel added. The group also opened an office in the western city of Lviv and also transported aid to Kyiv, the capital. “International charities have contacted HIA, expressing willingness to join the organization’s activities,” Lehel claimed.
Hungary’s prime minister said his government supports humanitarian aid deliveries to Ukraine and accommodates hundreds of thousands of refugees.
However, Viktor Orbán refused to participate in weapons deliveries to Ukraine, saying Hungary does not want to become part of the war.
Orbán has been criticized for maintaining multi-billion dollar energy deals with Russia and his willingness to meet Moscow’s request to pay for natural gas deliveries in rubles.
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