Ukrainian officials have said some of the bodies pulled from a mass grave outside the recently recaptured city of Izium showed signs of torture. Oleg Synegubov, the regional governor, said some of the more than 440 bodies buried in a forest near the north-eastern city also had their hands tied behind their backs. “We are at the site of the mass burial of people, civilians who were buried here, and now, according to our information, they all have the signs of violent death,” Synegubov said at the site. “There are bodies with hands tied behind [their backs]. Each fact will be investigated and will be properly and legally evaluated.” The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Thursday evening accused Russia of “leaving death everywhere” after the discovery of the site. He likened the find, in an area recaptured this week from Russian forces, to the previous mass killings of civilians in the cities of Bucha, outside Kyiv, and Mariupol. Men in white overalls began digging out bodies on Friday as part of a mass exhumation at the site, reporters with the Reuters news agency said, and 20 white bodybags could be seen. Reuters reported that several bodies had rope tied around their necks and hands. The Ukrainian police chief Ihor Klymenko told a news conference that all of the bodies recovered so far appeared to be of civilians, although there was information that some soldiers may have been buried there too. Video from Izium showed a sandy pine forest dotted with graves. Wooden crosses marked the locations. One handwritten sign read: “Ukraine armed forces, 17 people, Izium city, [taken] from morgue.” A few listed numbers – 345, 347, 444. Others had no inscriptions. Speaking in a video address on Thursday night, Zelenskiy called on the world to “hold Russia to real account for this war”. He said: “Russia leaves death everywhere and it must be held responsible for that.” Serhiy Bolvinov, the chief police investigator for Kharkiv region, told Sky News that some of the people had died as a result of shelling and airstrikes. He said forensic investigations would be carried out on every grave. “I can say it is one of the largest burial sites in a big town in liberated [areas] … 440 bodies were buried in one place,” he said. Oleh Kotenko, Ukraine’s missing persons ombudsman, who visited the forest on Thursday, said some graves contained names and dates. Corpses of Ukrainian soldiers were taken in a van from the local morgue and tossed into a mass grave in black sacks, he said. Citing video posted by Russian soldiers on social media, he said there were probably more than 17 bodies in one location. “We haven’t counted them yet, but I think there are more than 25 or even 30,” he said. Investigators with metal detectors were scanning the site for hidden explosives. Sergei Gorodko, an Izium resident, said that among the hundreds buried in individual graves were dozens of adults and children killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building. He said he pulled some of them out of the rubble “with my own hands”. Thousands of Russian troops fled Izium at the weekend after a stunning Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Russians abandoned almost all of Kharkiv province and retreated to new defensive positions east of the Oskil River, about 10 miles from Izium. There was no immediate public comment from Moscow. The Ukrainian defence ministry tweeted: “Mass graves are being discovered in Izium after liberation from the [Russians],” and it added: “The current largest burial [site] has 440 unmarked graves.” The exact circumstances of how residents died have yet to be determined. In February and March, Russian troops killed more than 1,400 people in the Kyiv region, including in the suburb of Bucha, during their failed attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital. They rounded up, interrogated and executed hundreds of civilians. Most of the victims were men. They also included the female heads of villages, who were shot and buried with their families, and parents and children gunned down as they tried to drive to safety. Dozens of bombed-out apartment buildings in Izium’s city centre lie derelict along roads covered with the debris of what has been one of this war’s most fierce battles, resulting in the deaths of at least 1,000 people, according to Ukrainian officials. On Wednesday, the city – described as a second Mariupol because of the heavy bombardments it has suffered – was visited by the outside world for the first time after its recapture. The Russian army killed more than 20,000 people in Mariupol, a south-eastern city on the Sea of Azov, according to Kyiv. Russian troops encircled the port in early March and systematically bombed it until mid-May, attacking from land, sea and air. Survivors buried loved ones in makeshift graves next to their apartment blocks and in children’s playgrounds. Others were left entombed in the basements and cellars of high-rise apartment blocks pulverised by Russian strikes. Bodies remained there for weeks. Russia has repeatedly denied it targets civilians or has committed war crimes.