Bosnia mass grave yields 182 bodies, more expected

By Miran Jelenek

KEVLJANI, Bosnia, Sept 24 (Reuters) -- Forensic experts said on Friday they had found remains of 182 people, believed to have been wartime prisoners killed by Bosnian Serb forces, in a mass grave in western Bosnia and that they expected to find more.

"So far we have exhumed 182 complete and incomplete bodies," said Jasmin Odobasic, an official of the Commission for Missing Persons of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation. "Certainly there are 30-50 more bodies in the grave."

The experts, working since mid-August, dug about five metres down into the mass grave, the second found in the village of Kevljani near the town of Prijedor.

The bottom of the grave, located in the field near houses, was covered with skulls and bones. Remains were placed in white plastic bags on the edges of the hole.

The U.N. investigators unearthed in 1999 the remains of close to 150 people in the first mass grave found in the village. The victims had been detainees in the Serb-run Omarska detention camp, located only a kilometre away.

Early in the 1992-95 Bosnian War, thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were held, killed or tortured in the camps of Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, near Prijedor. Nearly 3,500 people went missing from Prijedor alone, and about 1,000 are still unaccounted for.

Odobasic said that documents found on some bodies in the second Kevljani grave showed that the victims were also Omarska prisoners.

"We have found 20 documents, three of persons of Croat nationality and 17 belonging to persons of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) nationality, and witnesses said that all of them were detained in Omarska camp," Odobasic told Reuters at the site.

He said that some 4,000 bodies of non-Serbs had been exhumed from 110 mass graves in the wider western Krajina region of Bosnia. Only about half have been identified so far.

About 29,000 people, mostly Muslims, are still missing from the war. The remains of around 18,000 have been found in mass graves -- including about 5,000 of up to 8,000 Muslims killed by Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995 -- and 10,000 have been identified.

The Kevljani grave is a so-called secondary mass grave, where remains have been moved from another site to hide evidence of the killings. There were several layers in the grave and it is believed the bodies were dumped there at different times.

Odobasic said that bullets had been found in some 20 bodies. "When we wash the clothes and examine the bones we will have much better clues about the method of execution," he said.

Asim Jakupovic, a former camp inmate, came to the grave site searching for relatives who went missing in Omarska.

"I believe that many of those who went missing from Omarska will be found here," he said.