More than 1,200 bodies found in Kyiv region: Ukraine official

Kramatorsk: Ukraine's prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova on Sunday said that 1,222 bodies have been found in the region around the capital Kyiv so far, adding to mounting casualties six weeks into Russia's invasion of its neighbour.

"We have actually now, only for this morning, 1,222 dead people only in the Kyiv region," Venediktova said in an interview with Britain's Sky News.

She said the country was examining the alleged culpability of 500 leading Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, for thousands of war crimes.

As per reports, heavy bombardments hammered Ukraine through the weekend.

Shelling claimed two lives in northeast Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Sunday morning, regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov said, the day after 10 civilians, including a child, died in a bombing southeast of the city, according to authorities.

"The Russian army continues to wage war on civilians due to a lack of victories at the front," Sinegoubov said on Telegram.

In Dnipro, a large industrial city of a million inhabitants, a rain of Russian missiles nearly destroyed the local airport, causing an uncertain number of casualties, local authorities said. It had already been struck on March 15.

President Volodymyr Zelensky again condemned atrocities against civilians, and after speaking with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said they had agreed "that all perpetrators of war crimes must be identified and punished".

And White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pledged the US would "work with the international community to make sure there's accountability" for what he called "mass atrocities".

At the Vatican, Pope Francis called for an Easter ceasefire to pave the way for peace, denouncing a war where "defenceless civilians" suffered "heinous massacres and atrocious cruelty".

The death count rose as well in the east of Ukraine, where a missile strike on Friday killed 57 people at a railway station in the city of Kramatorsk, according to a revised tally issued by Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region.

Residents in the east have been fleeing in their thousands as Ukraine prepares for "important battles" against Moscow's forces, Zelensky said.