“Fourteen bodies were found in the destroyed theater during the procedural steps. No more remains were found,” the head of the Investigation Department of the DPR Prosecutor General’s Office, Alexei Kutsurubenko, told the Sputnik agency.

The official also stressed that the figure verified by the Donetsk authorities is well below the initial estimate of 300 dead that Ukraine blamed on an alleged air strike conducted by Russia late in last March.

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied this bombardment at all times and affirmed that the fighters of the nationalist Azov battalion detonated the explosives that they had planted in the building, whose basement served as a shelter for hundreds of civilians.

“The debris removal work has been completed, all basements have been checked,” Kutsurubenko said. He stated that “in fact, there were no civilians left in the theater on the day of the tragedy,” and added that the investigations revealed that a food and humanitarian aid distribution point operated on the site, with civilians coming to the scene to eat, but there were few of them.

The representative of the Donetsk Prosecutor’s Office stated that the investigations showed the presence of weapons in the premises.

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