U.N. in Kosovo hands over 11 bodies of Serb war victims to families

U.N. in Kosovo hands over 11 bodies of Serb war victims to families
Associated Press Worldstream - April 7, 2006 Friday 11:10 AM GMT

MERDARE Serbia-Montenegro - U.N. officials in Kosovo on Friday handed over the bodies of 11 Serb civilians killed during the 1998-99 conflict in the troubled southern province.

Dark wooden coffins carrying the bodies mostly Serbs from the Kosovo towns of Prizren, Suva Reka and Gnjilane were brought to the boundary crossing at Merdare, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the provincial capital, Pristina.

Grieving relatives, who had arrived from various Serbian towns, lit candles and women dressed in black wailed by the tents where the coffins were first placed before the families ferried them home for burials.

Of the 11 bodies, five were exhumed from a mass grave in Kosovo's southern town of Malisevo, once a stronghold of ethnic Albanian rebels that fought with Serb forces in 1998. The rest were retrieved from several other sites throughout the province, said Valerie Brasey, an official from the U.N.-run office for missing persons and forensics.

All of them were previously listed as missing persons.

There are 2,398 people still listed as missing from the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict and their fate remains one of the most sensitive and emotionally charged issues between the two former foes. Thousands perished during the brief war.

Representatives of the two sides have several times attempted to establish the whereabouts of ethnic Albanians, Serbs and others who vanished during the fighting.

The war was halted in mid-1999 after NATO launched an air war to halt Serb forces crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Since then, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations.