MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. Russian prosecutor general Igor Krasnov has revealed that the Romanov royal family's grisly end in 1918 was prolonged due to the executioners having to shoot extra rounds because their bullets kept ricocheting off diamonds sewn into the royals' clothes.

Krasnov, who previously headed the criminal investigation into the murder of the royal family, said in an interview with journalist Sergey Minayev that investigators have been pouring over the testimony given by those involved in the shooting of the royal family.

"According to their confessions, which we watched, they were very surprised that during the murder they [members of the Romanov family] did not die immediately; they remained alive for some time. Why? Because they had diamonds and jewelry sewn into their clothes, and the bullets ricocheted off. The killers were pretty miffed by this, and they did not hide that. Unfortunately, they did not say so on video (the testimonies are preserved in written sources from video recordings made in the 1960s - TASS). In the end, they had to finish them off with bayonets," the top prosecutor said, citing the investigation materials.

"The bullets just bounced off, so they had to shoot for a long time trying to kill them," he added. When asked whether the executioners stole the jewelry afterward, Krasnov pointed out that "some of it was appropriated, some of it remained in the archives of the museums where they were found."

On the night of July 17, 1918, Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, their children and servants were shot in Yekaterinburg in the basement of the house of mining engineer Nikolay Ipatiev, after which their bodies were taken outside the city. During the investigation, the execution was recreated. In a small room , 11 people stood together to face their grisly end. The doors to the room were open, and the firing squad stood in the doorway in two or maybe even three rows.