Forensic experts have uncovered 10 bodies so far in new mass grave in eastern Bosnia expected to contain the remains of 72 Muslims killed early in the Bosnia war, the head of a local forensics team said on today.
Some of the bodies were of children, and the remains of more children and women were expected to be found, said Mr Murat Hurtic, head of a regional department of the Commission for Missing Persons of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation.
"We expect to find the remains of 15 children aged three to 15 and of 10 women," Mr Hurtic said.
Documents of a Muslim from the village of Zaklopaca retrieved from the grave suggested the victims were villagers slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces on May 16th, 1992, Mr Hurtic said.
"We know for sure that they were first buried in a primary grave and then transferred to this secondary grave, some two kilometres away," Mr Hurtic said.
Secondary graves have been used in the past to hide traces of criminal wrongdoing.
He said the exhumation of the grave site was difficult because several tonnes of stones had been put on top of it in an attempt to hide the location.
"We expect to find the remains of several whole families in the grave," Mr Hurtic added.
Bosnian Serb forces were thought to have killed the Zaklopaca villagers following an unsuccessful attack by the Serbs on the eastern town of Srebrenica in May 1992.