MOSCOW, July 24 (Reuters) - A fisherman found four plastic
barrels holding 248 human foetuses in a forest in Russia's Ural
Mountains, media and police said on Tuesday.
Police launched an investigation after officials said the
remains, discovered on Sunday, appeared to have come from three
hospitals in Yekaterinburg, the capital of Sverdlovsk region.
"It seems the company responsible for disposal of the
bio-medical waste did not carry out its duties," the deputy head
of the regional government, Vladimir Vlasov, said on state
television.
Photographs from the site showed foetuses with tags scrawled
with numbers and inscriptions that Russian media said were
family names.
"A friend called at night and said he went fishing and
wanted to get some wood for his fire. He ran into some water
canisters and wanted to take them home, but when he came closer
he saw little baby bodies," local resident Sergei Tveritinov
told state television.
(Reporting by Ludmila Danilova and Gabriela Baczynska; Editing
by Steve Gutterman and Andrew Heavens)