MOSCOW, Oct. 5 Construction workers found 34 skeletons and a rusty pistol in the basement of a building in Moscow near the Kremlin.
The cellar may have been used for secret executions carried out under the Soviet Union, the Moscow Times said.
"The shots were fired point blank," an unidentified police officer told Interfax. "The nature of the wounds and the positioning of the bodies suggest that the workers have found an execution chamber. The bodies had been in the cellar for at least 60 years."
Vladimir Korobkov, a spokesman for the Moscow City Police, said the bodies appeared to have been buried in shallow graves or to have had earth thrown on them, the Times said.
The building is in a block that once belonged to a 19th-century merchant. Immediately across the street is 23 Nikolskaya Ulitsa, which housed the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union and was nicknamed The Shooting House.
Sergei Baluchevsky, chief prosecutor for the area, said the age of the skeletons has not yet been determined and that none had obvious bullet holes. He said that the pistol is a 1903 model Browning that may have no connection to the bodies.
Copyright 2007 by UPI
