Excavation begins at biggest mass grave found from Bosnian war

MEMICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Two backhoes scraped away topsoil and revealed human bones Monday as forensic experts began excavating what they believe is the largest mass grave found so far from the Bosnian war.

The site is thought to contain the remains of several hundred Muslim civilians killed during the 1992-95 war. Among them are some of those slain in the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, which was Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

"This is most likely the biggest mass grave ever found in Bosnia and it will take us more than a month to uncover all the bodies," said Murat Hurtic, the head of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons for the region of Tuzla.

The site is near Memici, a village about 50 miles northeast of Sarajevo. It was detected a year ago after tips from people who had seen convoys of trucks heading there with loads of bodies. The commission kept the finding secret for a year, fearing possible disturbance of the site before excavations could be conducted.

Hundreds of Bosnian Muslims were executed when ethnic Serb forces occupied the area close to border with Serbia at the start of war over Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia. The bodies were initially buried together at the Muslim cemetery in nearby Zvornik.

Later, some of the remains are believed to have been moved to the Memici site for burial with some of the Srebrenica victims. An estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys were summarily executed after Serb militiamen overran the nearby enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

The tactic of moving and reburying victims was used by Bosnian Serbs to hide evidence of massacres from the U.N. war crimes tribunal .

that is prosecuting alleged perpetrators of atrocities during the Balkan wars. U.N. investigators were at the site Monday.

Hurtic said bodies were moved to the Memici mass grave at the end of 1995 and the start of 1996.

Skeletons in such graves often are crushed and mixed up during reburial. DNA from bone marrow will be matched with blood samples taken from families of missing persons in an effort to identify those in the grave.

The Bosnian war, involving the country's Serbs, Croats and Slavic Muslims, killed 250,000 people and left more than 20,000 missing. The bodies of many of the missing are being gradually found in mass graves throughout the country. Some 90 percent are Bosnian Muslims.