A new mass grave believed to contain dozens of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre has been discovered in eastern Bosnia, an official said Wednesday. The new grave measuring at least 10 by three metres (33 by 10 feet) was discovered at Kamenica village, near the town of Zvornik, said Murat Hurtic of Bosnia's Missing Persons Commission.
"The remains of around 10 people appeared on the surface as we removed the first layer of soil (and) at least several dozen remains" were expected to be uncovered in total, he told AFP. The exhumation work was expected to continue for two weeks. Serb forces overran the then UN-protected Muslim enclave Srebrenica in the final phase of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, summarily killing some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Europe's single worst atrocity since World War II.
The victims were initially buried in a dozen mass graves. But after the release of satellite pictures showing large portions of freshly disturbed ground, Serbs moved them to other locations in order to cover up the crimes. The body parts were separated during reburial using bulldozers, and forensic experts sometimes found parts of a single person buried in three different so-called secondary graves.
"It is the 10th so-called secondary grave found in Kamenica", said Amor Masovic, the head of the commission. Soil probes showed there were at least three other graves in the village, he said, adding that they would probably be exhumed later this year. The remains of thousands of the victims have been exhumed from about 70 mass graves around the ill-fated town, with more than 5,600 people identified by DNA analysis.
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