Several barrels containing hundreds of human embryos have been discovered in a remote forest gully in Russia’s Urals, police said on Monday.

Local residents came across the plastic barrels in the woods in the Sverdlovsk region, local police spokesman Valery Gorelykh said.

The barrels were labeled with what police believe were registration numbers of the mothers and the hospital units, Gorelykh said.

First reports mentioned some 50 embryos in four barrels, but Gorelykh later put the figure at 248.

The embryos were medical waste from several clinics in regional capital Yekaterinburg, slated for destruction by an unspecified company that apparently neglected its duties, regional authorities said in a statement.