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Tuesday, 16 July, 2002, 13:22 GMT 14:22 UK

Mass grave at Ukrainian monastery

Ukrainian television says the remains of about 200 people, 70 of them children, have been found buried under the floors of a monastery near Lviv, in western Ukraine.

Some of the bones had apparent bullet wounds.

Ukrainian forensic scientists believe they were victims of Stalinist repression in the late 1940s. A Soviet secret police unit was stationed in the monastery's buildings at the time.

Last week, a similar mass grave was found in the Russian Supreme Court building in central Moscow.

Western historians estimate tens of millions of people were executed or sent to death camps in the Stalinist purges across Eastern Europe between the 1930s and 1950s.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service


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