Bosnia: 38 bodies exhumed from mass grave

Forensics experts in Bosnia said today they had exhumed 38 bodies, eight of them children, from a recently-found mass grave.

The grave contained the bodies of victims of a Serb attack on the eastern Bosnian town of Bratunac at the beginning of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

The forensic team completed the exhumations in the village of Suha, near Bratunac, yesterday and among 38 bodies found eight children, several women and mostly elderly men, Murat Hurtic, the head of the forensic team, said from Tuzla in northeast Bosnia. The exhumations began on May 9.

“All bodies were contained in plastic bags, and five children died embraced by women. Two were embraced (by men), while one was alone,” Hurtic said.

He added that unlike other mass graves found in this area, the bodies were packed into bags, which will make the exhumation easier.

What the teams usually find are so-called secondary mass graves, meaning that the bodies had been moved to other locations after being buried elsewhere in an effort to cover up the crime.

Sometimes the perpetrators used bulldozers to move the remains, so the forensic teams often find parts of the same body in two, or even three, different locations.

The remains will undergo DNA analysis in an attempt to identify them. Their identification is important for the victims’ families, many of whom say they won’t come to terms with the deaths until they have a body to bury.

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 and presumed dead following the war.

About 260,000 people were killed and 1.8 million driven from their homes during the conflict, which pitted Bosnia’s Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs against each other.