The mayor of Bucha, a commuter town northwest of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, claimed Saturday that almost 300 victims were buried in a mass grave after the Ukrainian army retook control of the crucial town from Russia only to find bodies strewn around the city.

“We’ve already buried 280 bodies in mass graves in Bucha,” Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP via phone. He said that the streets of the ruined town are covered with bodies.

At least 20 individuals in civilian clothing were discovered spread across several hundred yards of one residential street.

Graphic videos and photographs of that street and others in the neighbourhood were widely disseminated on the internet.

One image showed a man’s body with his wrists tied behind his back and an open Ukrainian passport alongside him. Another had a big wound on his skull.

Two were beside bicycles, while the third was near an abandoned automobile. Some people were laying face up, with their limbs twisted, while others were lying face down.

The reasons of death were unknown, but the look of the bodies suggested they had been dead for many days, according to AFP.

Fedoruk stated in a video that seemed to be recorded outside the town hall that Ukrainian soldiers reclaimed Bucha on Friday. The advances came after many days of Ukrainian wins around Kyiv and in the north, when Russian soldiers withdrew following a failed attempt to encircle the capital.

The conflict had wreaked havoc on the town, leaving gaping holes in apartment buildings and smashed automobiles littering the streets.