26 Oct 2010 / 17:40
The skeletal remains of at least 97 victims of the wars in the former Yugoslavia were found in a lake on the border between Bosnia and Serbia, following a unique search by a multiethnic team, officials said on Tuesday.
Sabina Arslanagic
Officials from the Bosnian and Serbian institutes for missing persons said on Tuesday that 451 human bone fragments had been found in the bed of Lake Perucac.
“In most cases it is just a single bone or a jaw…(but)following initial forensic examinations, experts believe the remains account for at least 97 people,” the head of Bosnia’s Institute for Missing People, Amor Masovic, told a press conference.
Before completing the work on October 2, forensic experts from the two countries, helped by some 2,500 Bosnian volunteers including the relatives of the missing, “thoroughly searched” both banks of the 55-killometre long lake, Masovic said.
This was the first time that Bosnian forensic experts participating in the search for the remains of the war missing “were people of different ethnicities from all parts of the country”, Masovic said.
“This operation was unique because for the first time…we worked together on the same task,” Masovic said.
Hundreds of mass graves had been found and exhumed in Bosnia since the end of the war.
The man-made Perucac Lake on the River Drina, which divides Bosnia and Serbia, was emptied in July for the maintenance of the dam for a Serbian hydroelectric plant.
Further up the river lies Visegrad, a Bosnian city where nearly 1,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) went missing during the Serb ethnic-cleansing of the town at the start of the country’s 1992-95 war.
Most are believed to have been killed and dumped into the river. Their remains then washed into the lake a few kilometres downstream.
Some of the skeletal remains found on the Serbian side are believed to belong to Albanians killed during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
Masovic praised “excellent cooperation” with Serbian authorities, who decided to halt the filling of the lake after the dam repair work was completed to allow more time for the search.
The head of Serbia’s Commission for Missing Persons, Veljko Odalovic, said that he was “convinced that finding the truth about the missing is one of the most important issues” for the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
“It is the key for reconciliation,” in the war-torn region, he said.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, some 15,000 people are still unaccounted for after the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, which tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ICRC believes that thousands of missing affect the lives of another 200,000 people in the region who still search for their loved ones.
The skeletal remains of at least 97 victims of the wars in the former Yugoslavia were found in a lake on the border between Bosnia and Serbia, following a unique search by a multiethnic team, officials said on Tuesday.
Sabina Arslanagic
Officials from the Bosnian and Serbian institutes for missing persons said on Tuesday that 451 human bone fragments had been found in the bed of Lake Perucac.
“In most cases it is just a single bone or a jaw…(but)following initial forensic examinations, experts believe the remains account for at least 97 people,” the head of Bosnia’s Institute for Missing People, Amor Masovic, told a press conference.
Before completing the work on October 2, forensic experts from the two countries, helped by some 2,500 Bosnian volunteers including the relatives of the missing, “thoroughly searched” both banks of the 55-killometre long lake, Masovic said.
This was the first time that Bosnian forensic experts participating in the search for the remains of the war missing “were people of different ethnicities from all parts of the country”, Masovic said.
“This operation was unique because for the first time…we worked together on the same task,” Masovic said.
Hundreds of mass graves had been found and exhumed in Bosnia since the end of the war.
The man-made Perucac Lake on the River Drina, which divides Bosnia and Serbia, was emptied in July for the maintenance of the dam for a Serbian hydroelectric plant.
Further up the river lies Visegrad, a Bosnian city where nearly 1,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) went missing during the Serb ethnic-cleansing of the town at the start of the country’s 1992-95 war.
Most are believed to have been killed and dumped into the river. Their remains then washed into the lake a few kilometres downstream.
Some of the skeletal remains found on the Serbian side are believed to belong to Albanians killed during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
Masovic praised “excellent cooperation” with Serbian authorities, who decided to halt the filling of the lake after the dam repair work was completed to allow more time for the search.
The head of Serbia’s Commission for Missing Persons, Veljko Odalovic, said that he was “convinced that finding the truth about the missing is one of the most important issues” for the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
“It is the key for reconciliation,” in the war-torn region, he said.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, some 15,000 people are still unaccounted for after the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, which tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ICRC believes that thousands of missing affect the lives of another 200,000 people in the region who still search for their loved ones.
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