Two decades after Serb soldiers carried out house-to-house searches in a campaign of ethnic killings in Bosnia, forensic scientists are digging up what could turn out to be the largest mass grave from the 1992-95 war.
So far, the remains of 360 people have been found at the Tomasica mass grave discovered in September near the northern town of Prijedor, far more than expected, authorities said yesterday.
The number is expected to rise and could one day surpass the 629 bodies found at Crni Vrh, in Srebrenica.
The Missing Persons’ Institute said the Tomasica grave is linked to a secondary one found in 2003 about six miles (10km) away.
At this location about 370 bodies were removed from the ground. Authorities believe the perpetrators of the killings moved parts of the remains from one grave to the other in a bid to hide the crime.
In some cases, remains from the same person have been found in both graves.
Institute official Mujo Begic said he expects more remains to be found at the Tomasica site, and the bodies are of Bosniak and Croat men, women and children killed in their villages during the war.
“Together with the relocated ones, the number of the bodies here indicates the biggest mass grave so far found in Bosnia,” Mr Begic said.
“We have found some identification documents in the grave, so we know who these people are.”
The grave covers more than 53,820sq ft and is about 30ft deep.
Tomasica is near Prijedor, which was a site of serious crimes against humanity committed by Christian Orthodox Serbs against Moslem Bosniaks and Catholic Croats.
Many of the victims were killed in one of the three Nazi-style concentration camps Serb authorities had set up near Prijedor.
Authorities hope some of the 1,200 still missing from the area are now found in the Tomasica grave. The remains will be definitively identified through DNA matching from samples provided by living relatives. Most of the victims were killed in their villages and brought to this location to be buried, but teams have also found bullets in the grave indicating some were brought here alive and that this was an execution site, prosecutor Eldar Jahic said, citing evidence and witnesses.