SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 21 August 2003 —Forensic experts have exhumed the remains of 150 war victims from Bosnia’s largest-known mass grave — and expect to find hundreds more, officials said yesterday.
The mass grave site, about the size of a tennis court, was opened last month on Crni Vrh hill, near the border with Serbia about 50 miles northeast of the capital of Sarajevo.
Judging by documents and clothing found in the grave so far, the remains are believed to be those of Muslims killed by Bosnian Serb soldiers in and around the eastern town of Zvornik between April and June 1992. Most were civilians.
Some of the victims were reburied in the mass grave after being unearthed from elsewhere, including three mass graves in nearby Zvornik, said Murat Hurtic, head of a local branch of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons.
Two months ago, following tips from witnesses and survivors, forensic experts opened those graves on the edge of a cemetery, only to find them empty. Scraps of clothing and a few scattered bones indicated where hundreds of bodies had been buried but had since disappeared.
Hurtic said that the skeletons of three children and 10 women were among those exhumed so far at the Crni Vrh site, which experts believe may contain up to 700 bodies.
“Initially, we thought we would need up to two months to complete the exhumation process here, but it will take us more time because there are more and more body remains appearing,” Hurtic said.
Experts have dug more than 12 feet deep in some places, finding layers of dismembered remains, and Hurtic said they will go deeper in their search.
About 250,000 people were killed during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war between local Serbs, Muslims and Croats. Some 20,000 are missing and presumed dead.
Forensic experts have exhumed 16,500 bodies from more than 300 mass graves found since the end of the war throughout the country. Crni Vrh is the 14th mass grave found this year.
