Bosnia's Largest Mass Grave Held Remains of Over 600 Dead

Bosnia
The remains of 629 people have been recovered from Bosnia's largest known mass grave, a local official said as forensic experts completed two months of exhumations. In one corner of the grave, investigators found 11 skeletons of children aged between 18 months and 12 years, along with with those of 12 women believed to have been their mothers. Bullet holes were found in the skull of a three-year old, while the skeleton of a five or a six-year-old had a bullet in the backbone, said Ismet Music, a member of the Bosnian Muslim commission for missing people. "We have completed the exhumation. The remains of 629 (people) were found," he said. "There were 481 complete skeletons and another 148 with some limbs or skulls missing." Eva Klonowski, a forensic expert, said recently that the area with the childrens' remains had been called the "sad corner" by investigators. "Small bones were found in baby underwear," she said. Music said clothing and personal documents found with the dead showed they were Muslim civilians believed to have been killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 war in the rugged Balkan republic. The grave is 40 metres (130 feet) long, four metres deep and located in mountainous countryside near the eastern town of Zvornik. It is the largest burial site found from the war that claimed over 200,000 lives. The remains from the site, which is within the Serb-run part of Bosnia some 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, have been stored in a morgue in the town of Tuzla where it is hoped they will be identified. Relatives of the missing had been visiting the grave every day, some coming from as far as from Britain, seeking news of their loved ones. The identification process using DNA tests might take months. So far only one victim, Hajdar Grahic, had been identified when his son recognised a sweater on one of the skeletons. A DNA sample taken from the victim's bone matched his son. Grahic was among a group of some 700 Muslims from a village near Zvornik, who were separated from their wifes and children and packed on trucks after Bosnian Serb forces backed by the former Yugoslav People's Army seized mainly Muslim eastern Bosnia in mid-1992. They were never seen again. Another 800 Muslims from the Zvornik area are also reported as missing. The authorities were tipped off about the site in an area known as Crni Vrh, or Black Peak, by a witness who claimed to have seen the bodies being buried. Experts said the site was a "secondary" grave where Bosnian Serbs brought bodies from other areas to hide their crimes and confuse investigators. Around 350 bodies have already been found in other mass graves in the area. Almost eight years after the end of the war, the fate of more than 16,000 missing people is still not known, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Forensic experts have so far exhumed the remains of more than 18,000 people from some 300 mass graves across Bosnia. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic, indicted by The Hague (news - web sites)-based UN tribunal for genocide and war crimes, are still at large and believed to be hiding in Bosnia and neighbouring Serbia. Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) is on trial at The Hague for his role in the 1990s wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. For the Bosnian war he faces a separate charge of genocide relating to the 1995 massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A Bosnian forensics expert unearths a woman's scull from the Crni vrh (Black Peak) mass grave near the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, September 17, 2003. (REUTERS/Danilo Krstanovic)

Related Articles

Prayer Times

Prayer times for Doha, Qatar Other?
  • Fajr
    03:38 AM
  • Dhuhr
    11:32 AM
  • Asr
    03:01 PM
  • Maghrib
    06:02 PM
  • Isha
    07:32 PM