Polish and Ukrainian investigators have recovered the remains of 55 victims, predominantly women and children, killed during the 1943 Volhynia massacres. The remains were found at the sites of the former villages of Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said on Friday, following nearly four weeks of excavation work. JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. TVP World visited the exhumation sites, where Polish and Ukrainian experts have been examining the remains, documenting injuries and collecting DNA samples in an effort to identify the victims more than eight decades after the killings. Polish investigators also recovered more than 300 personal items, including crosses, rosaries and religious medallions bearing inscriptions in Polish. Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka were among hundreds of Polish communities targeted during the Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainian nationalists killed tens of thousands of Polish civilians in the 1940s. The killings are one of the most sensitive issues in Polish-Ukrainian relations, even as Warsaw continues to be one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters in its war against Russia. Most child victims under 12 The largest discovery was made at a former farmstead in Wola Ostrowiecka, where investigators recovered the remains of 48 people, including 24 children, 17 women and three men. The sex of four other victims could not be determined because of the condition of the remains.