Remains of 34 people dug out near Kremlin

Construction workers have unearthed body parts of 34 people in a cellar, a few hundred metres from the Kremlin,

Construction workers have unearthed body parts of 34 people in a cellar, a few hundred metres from the Kremlin, in what may be proof of a Soviet-era execution of the Great Terror under the leadership of Josef Stalin, in 1937-1938.

The spokesman for the Moscow Police Vladimir Korobkov said on Thursday the remains of 34 people and a rusty pistol were discovered in the basement of 8 Nikolskaya Street.

“The shots were fired point blank. The nature of the wounds and the positioning of the bodies suggest that the workers have found an execution chamber,” an anonymous law enforcement source told Interfax news agency.

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“The bodies had been in the cellar for at least 60 years,” he said.

Russian TV channels showed video-footage of dozens of bones, seemingly sorted out into different types.

The body part may mark the burial site of victims of a 1930s mass execution by the NKVD, a forerunner of the KGB. “It is the biggest such find in the centre of Moscow,” Director of the Memorial human rights organisation,Yelena Zhemkova said.

Known as Chizhevskoye Podvorye, the address comprises a series of buildings that belonged to a famous 19th century merchant said to have been a friend of famous Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.

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The place is also close to one of the city’s most notorious buildings, where tens of thousands of victims of Stalinist repression were killed.