269 Bodies Found Near Belgrade

Serbian investigators said Tuesday that they have found 269 bodies in the biggest of five mass graves discovered since the downfall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last year. The graves are believed to hold victims of the Kosovo conflict.

Excavation of the grave, located at a police compound in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, was completed Tuesday after more than two months of work, the Belgrade District Court said in a statement. Another mass grave has been found at the site.

“According to preliminary exhumation and autopsy results, at least 269 unidentified bodies of males of various ages were found,” the statement said.

In addition to the two graves at Batajnica, authorities in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, have found three other mass graves.

Exhumations began in June, and authorities have reported 427 bodies recovered to date, including those reported Tuesday.

Judging from the state of decomposition, the bodies had been in the ground about two years, the court said. All were in civilian clothing.

In Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia now under international rule, investigators have recovered more than 4,000 bodies at more than 400 sites.

Reformers who ousted Milosevic last year handed him over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague in June to face charges of atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo committed by Serbian forces under his command.

The court said some bodies found at the Batajnica site had been exposed to high temperatures and that particles and bullets from hand-held firearms were discovered. Bone and soft tissue damage among the dead was also reported.