Bosnia Buries Remains of 48 War Victims

Bosnia on Saturday reburied the remains of 48 Muslims killed during the country's 1990s war that had been exhumed from mass graves in the northwestern town of Prijedor, FENA news agency reported.

Before the burial of the victims killed at the start of the 1992-1995 war -- the youngest was a 15-year-old girl -- a joint prayer attended by hundreds of their relatives and friends was held at the town's stadium. After the religious ceremony the victims were buried in different cemeteries. Three brothers, including twins aged 21 when they were killed and whose remains had been found in the same mass grave, were also among those buried on Saturday. So far 96 mass graves with the remains of local Muslims and Croats have been found in the Prijedor area, officials said.

After Bosnian Serbs took control of the region in April 1992, the homes of non-Serbs were destroyed, families were separated and thousands of people were incarcerated in detention camps, where many were tortured and executed. Pictures of the emaciated inmates at one of the detention camps, Omarska, resembling the walking skeletons of the Holocaust, shocked the world in mid-1992. More than 3,300 people were reported as missing from the Prijedor area after Bosnia's inter-ethnic war ended. So far the remains of more than 2,000 have been found and identified mostly by DNA analysis.