Remains of 11 People Recovered From Pit Near Bosnian Capital
Officials said Wednesday that they had exhumed from a pit the remains of 11 people believed to be Bosnian Muslims killed by Serbian forces in 1992.
Jasmin Odobasic of the Commission for Missing Persons in Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation said a forensic team expected to find dozens more bodies in the pit.
The team worked for a second day at the exhumation site in the village of Kalimanovici near the eastern town of Sokolac, 30 miles from Sarajevo, and planned to continue for at least several more days.
Odobasic said garbage, earth and animal bones had been thrown into the pit to conceal the human remains. There were indications that the victims were Muslims from the eastern town of Visegrad, who were taken away in a bus in 1992 by Bosnian Serb forces.
But Odobasic added that it was too early to confirm these suspicions, as no documents had yet been found to identify the victims.
Western diplomats and officials working with international agencies overseeing the Balkan country’s peace process announced that they would visit the site today.
Postwar Bosnia is divided into two highly autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic. Each has its own Commission for Missing Persons, and each commission is entitled to conduct exhumations in the other’s territory.
About 200,000 Bosnians are estimated to have been killed during the war, and about 20,000 are listed as missing.
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