Remains of Kosovo Albanian War Victims Found in Serbia
Forsenic experts in Serbia have uncovered the remains of ethnic Albanians killed during the Kosovo war in a suspected mass grave, officials said Tuesday.
Since the exhumation began at the Rudnica quarry near the southwestern town of Raska in April, "the remains of 21 persons have been found," Serbia's commission for missing persons said in a statement.
"DNA analysis has shown that 17 of them were Kosovo Albanians, while the remains of four more persons are still being identified," it added.
The exhumation at Rudnica was ordered after human remains were discovered in the area in December after more than three years of searching the site.
War crimes investigators have said the quarry was one of the sites where Serbian forces under then-strongman Slobodan Milosevic moved the remains of Kosovo civilians at the end of the 1998-1999 conflict, reburying them in Serbia in a bid to hide their crimes.
Before the exhumation began, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told Agence France Presse that the grave might contain the remains of as many as 250 Kosovo Albanians.
If confirmed, it could be the largest mass grave found in Serbia.
More than 800 bodies of Kosovo Albanians were exhumed from three mass grave uncovered around Serbia in 2001.
Serbia's wartime deputy interior minister Vlastimir Djordjevic, sentenced by the United Nations court for war crimes committed in Kosovo to 18 years in jail, is believed to have ordered the removal of ethnic Albanian victims and their reburial in mass graves in Serbia.
More than 1,700 people, mostly from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, are still unaccounted for from the war.
The conflict killed more than 13,000 people, most of the victims ethnic Albanians.
The Kosovo war ended after a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ousted Serb forces from the province, which was then put under U.N. administration.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move recognised by the United States and most EU member states but not by Belgrade
Source: Agence France Presse
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