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More than 400 bodies found in Bosnian grave

Ap
Friday 29 October 2004 00:00 BST
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Forensics experts have exhumed 405 bodies from a mass grave, making it the second-largest such site found in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-95 war.

Forensics experts have exhumed 405 bodies from a mass grave, making it the second-largest such site found in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-95 war.

The site contains the bodies of Muslims and Croats killed at two wartime concentration camps, said Esad Bajramovic, a member of the Muslim-Croat missing persons commission.

Exhumations will continue for another week at the grave in Stari Kevljani, 110 miles north-west of Sarajevo. The mass grave is the 51st found in the area.

Based on evidence so far collected, most of the dead appeared to be Bosnian Muslims who had lived in and around Prijedor and were killed in the Omarska and Keraterm concentration camps in 1992, Bajramovic said.

"We are dealing with a secondary mass grave and expect to find another 20 to 30 bodies in it," he said.

So-called secondary mass graves are sites where bodies have been moved after being buried elsewhere in an effort to cover up the crime.

The remains will undergo DNA analysis in an attempt to identify them.

Over the years, UN and local forensics experts in Bosnia have exhumed 16,500 bodies from more than 300 mass graves. Thousands of people remain missing following the war.

About 260,000 people were killed and 1.8 million driven from their homes during the conflict, which pitted Bosnia's Muslims, Croats and Serbs against each other.

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