DONETSK, September 25. /ITAR-TASS/. One of the victims discovered in a mass burial near Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, has been identified as a local citizen, the head of a police department in Makiivka said on Thursday.

“This is a local citizen, he worked at the mine,” Pavel Strikov said.

The victim was among the four bodies uncovered by military police of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the Komunar mine earlier this week. An investigation into the discovered mass graves is ongoing, he added.

Mass graves discovered in eastern Ukraine

OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in its report on September 23 that three unmarked graves allegedly containing multiple bodies were found near the village Nyzhnia Krynka, some 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) northeast of Donetsk.

One of the graves contained some 40 bodies of civilians, while the two others had the bodies of captured militia members and Ukrainian soldiers, DPR’s Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko said on Thursday.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry believes the mass burial of civilians near Donetsk is a military crime that could have been committed by Ukraine’s National Guard, and insists on an urgent and comprehensive international probe into the case. Kiev has rejected the claims.