Nearly 250 human embryos found dumped in Russian forest

The police of Russia's Sverdlovsk region have completed the examination of the site where human embryos were found. The actual number of the embryos that were found on the location was five times larger as news agencies originally reported. "In total, there were 248 embryos found," spokesman for the State Ministry of the Interior of the Sverdlovsk Region, Valery Gorelykh, told reporters.

The official clarified that each embryo was approximately the size of a half of the human palm. According to him, all the found embryos were placed in the morgue of the city Nevyansk, where the post-mortem examination will be held on Tuesday, Interfax reports.

In addition, the police sent a request to the Regional Health Ministry with a request to clarify the meaning of the acronym that could be seen on the tags of the embryos. Detectives also try to find out the name of the organization, the services of which the medical institutions used to get rid of the embryos. The names of at least four medical institutions were preserved on the tags.

Earlier Monday, the Department of Information Policy in the region reported that the human embryos that were found in a forest in the Sverdlovsk region, turned out to be "the biological medical wastes of at least three health facilities in Yekaterinburg." The embryos did not come from only one hospital, the source added.

"It seems that the organization that deals with the disposal of such wastes has not met the requirements that it was supposed to meet," officials said. Now the authorities are trying to determine which organization was dealing with that.

"I think it will be established in the near future," Vladimir Vlasov, first deputy chairman of the regional government said. The guilty people will be punished accordingly, he added.

Mushroom pickers made the blood-chilling discovery in the Nevyansky district. The embryos were found in the ravine not far from Nizhny Tagil-Yekaterinburg highway in the evening of July 22. About 50 embryos treated with formaldehyde had been placed in four 50-liter plastic barrels. Tags with names and numbers were attached to the embryos. Afterwards, it was said that there were actually 248 embryos in the barrels.

"Those are probably the numbers of the chambers of the medical institutions, where female patients were staying," Valeri Gorelykh told reporters. It was also said that when the barrels were being dumped into the ravine, their lids burst open, and a part of the content leaked out on the ground.

According to one of the original versions, a medical institution could send a vehicle with the biological cargo to another organization, which refused to accept it. "Those would-be doctors perhaps decided to simply throw away the embryos in the woods," suggests Gorelykh.

Officials also said that, most likely, the blue plastic barrels, which contained the embryos, had been brought from another district or from Yekaterinburg. "Our district is small, and we do not have so many abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths," officials said.