Mass graves to be exhumed near Srebrenica
July 6, 1996
Web posted at: 10:15 p.m. EDT (0215 GMT)TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- A U.N. forensics team will begin unearthing the remains of victims of the Bosnian war's worst massacres on Sunday.
Earth-moving equipment has been brought in to uncover mass graves discovered near Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims are believed to be buried. The three-month project is part of an effort to build a case against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic.
Both men have been indicted for alleged war crimes by the U.N. war crimes tribunal that has been meeting at The Hague.
Government-held Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995. More than 7,000 Muslim men who escaped were never heard from again. Although they are listed as "missing," survivors say they were massacred by the Serbs.
During previous exhumations in the area, investigators found the remains of what is believed to be only a fraction of the number of massacre victims. Some of the graves are thought to contain the remains of as many as 2,700 people.
In a related development, Bosnian Serb authorities on Saturday ordered a team of Finnish forensics experts to stop removing skeletal remains from the hills near Srebrenica. The order came after investigators took some of the remains to a hospital in Tuzla for identification and burial.
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