UN investigators found 21 bodies in grave in Kosovo

UN investigators found 21 bodies in grave in Kosovo
Agence France Presse – English - April 22, 2005 Friday 2:30 PM GMT

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro April 22 - The UN mission in Kosovo announced Friday that its investigators so far had found 21 bodies in a cave suspected of containing a mass grave of non-Albanian victims of the 1998-99 war.

"Investigators from the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) and the Department of justice have identified 9 as being the remains of non-Albanian adult males," UN Mission (UNMIK) spokeswoman Marcia Poole said.

Earlier UNMIK said that preliminary findings indicate that the cave and its surroundings were used to secretly dispose of human remains and it could be related to the disappearance of non-Albanian Kosovars during the conflict.

The operation is being conducted in Klina municipality, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the provincial capital Pristina. Strong forces of the German contingent of NATO led peacekeepers (KFOR) are securing the site.

OMPF Head Jose-Pablo Baraybar Thursday met the families of those victims who have been identified to brief them on the investigation. The families expressed the wish to make a private visit to the site in the coming days.

Kosovo is a southern Serbian province that has been administered by the UN since a 1999 NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serbian troops to end a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and pull out.

The total number of missing people from the war is 3,192: 2,460 ethnic Albanians, 529 Serbs and 203 of other ethnic backgrounds.

Kosovo and Serbian officials have recently begun an ongoing dialogue on the fate of people listed as missing from the conflict.