Discovered by NATO Troops Repairing Bridge
VRHPOLJE, Bosnia, May 9 (Reuters) ½ Bosnian workers, supervised by United Nations war crimes investigators, unearthed about two dozen skeletons on Thursday at a suspected mass grave site in northwestern Bosnia. The digging began on Tuesday after NATO troops found several decomposed bodies at the site by the Sana river while they were repairing a bridge 12 km (eight miles) south of Sanski Most that had been destroyed during Bosnia's civil war.After dredging machines excavated a hole 10 metres (yards) wide, bodies were unearthed and piled outside the grave boundaries near the damaged bridge. "The idea is to create a pathway, so we can walk around (the site)," said Stefan Schmitt, a forensic specialist with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He and other representatives from the tribunal refused to say how many bodies had been found.
Reporters saw about 20 skeletons laid out under a nylon sheet. The bones were covered by pieces of faded clothing. Boots and sports shoes lay scattered around the site which reeked of decaying corpses. Judge Adil Draganovic, the Bosnian government official in charge of the investigation, told reporters there were at about 35 bodies in the grave.
All the bodies would be taken to a pathology ward in Sanski Most for identification on Friday, Draganovic said. He said there were three more suspected mass grave sites within a 500 metre (yard) perimeter and a large number of individual graves.
Mumin Kadinic, 63, a Muslim from Vrhpolje, crouched by a huddled skeleton that lay apart from the main heap. He said in a trembling voice he believed it was his son Elvir, killed at the age of 17. "My wife told me he had been wearing a brown jumpsuit," Kadinic said, pointing at a greenish, undistinguishable cloth. "Perhaps it turned green in time," he said. He said he hid in the woods when his son was captured in the village on May 6, 1992. About 50 Muslim families were brought to the bridge, where women were separated from men and then transported to central Bosnia, he said. "Elvir and 12 other Kadinic men are gone," he said.
Bosnian Serbs were presumed to have killed hundreds of non-Serbs as they swept through the Sanski Most area at the outset of the Bosnian war in 1992, according to government investigators. Muslim-led government troops recaptured the area last September.
Draganovic said he had interviewed a number of people who alleged they had witnessed a mass execution committed by the Serb Sixth Krajina brigade on May 31 and in early June of 1992. "The women who were separated from men said the killings went on for several days. A group of some 23 men were on May 31 beaten up and then made to jump off the bridge, to be shot by the Serbs while in the water,"
Massacre Hill On Location on the Killing Fields
Ghosts in the Woods The Srebrenica Massacre Site
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia United Nations
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia CalTech's Bosnia Site
Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
©1995-1996, All Rights Reserved
