Florie Vitia broke down after her husband's body was uncovered in a mass grave
VIDEO CNN's Nic Robertson reports on the grief-stricken villagers. (July 20) Windows Media 28K 80K

July 20, 1999
Web posted at: 10:08 p.m. EDT (0208 GMT)

From Correspondent Nic Robertson

MAKOVAC, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Although it has been five weeks since NATO troops entered Kosovo and ended atrocities committed by Serb forces against ethnic Albanians, mass graves are still being discovered across the war-torn province.

Driven by requests for help by worried relatives, the British Army and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have intensified their search for missing people.

Florie Vitia broke down in tears after her husband's body was found buried along a roadside, one of 96 mass graves reported in the British sector alone.

Investigators short of manpower

Relatives did most of the digging while war crimes investigators -- short of forensic experts and manpower --recorded the deaths.

"On these smaller sites, which are no less important, their responsibility is to record all the details as quickly and efficiently as they can to allow the dead to be buried properly and then look after the investigation as best they can," said British Army Maj. Ian Sereph.

Identification cards found on many of the dead make things easier for some relatives. For others, no news is not necessarily good news.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) compiled a computer database of ethnic Albanians still being held in Serb jails. For many families, the list is a source of hope.

A women named Halide was disappointed not to find her husband's name on the prison rolls.

"I thought my heart would stop because he must be dead," she said.

"We have answers now for 2,000 people, and that is a significant break," said ICRC official Daloni Carlisle.

"But given the estimates of the scale of the problem, it's going to be a long, long time before we have answers for everybody."

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