EXHUMATION OF UNIDENTIFIED VICTIMS STARTS NEAR BELGRADE

BELGRADE, June 13 (Hina) - Exhumation and autopsy of a still unknown number of unidentified bodies at Batajnica near Belgrade officially commenced on Tuesday, a Belgrade court stated on Wednesday. According to the court, representatives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) and of a Belgrade non-governmental foundation for humanitarian law, are observing the exhumation. Today the Interior Ministry of Serbia held a news conference and presented first photographs and a film about the preparations of the ground for the unearthing and first found corpses. The mass grave, 100 square metres large, is about 100 metres of the Danube river and is located on the southern side of the Belgrade- Batajnica motorway section. First corpses were found less than three metres underground. According to data presented at the conference, this mass grave contains corpses from the refrigerated trailer truck sunken in the Danube near Kladovo in March 1999. The truck was subsequently pulled out of the river, and corpses transferred to a site, which was unknown until one month ago. The mass grave is at the military training field "13.Maj". According to the reliable data, in the refrigerated trailer truck there were 86 corpses of naked children, old people, women in the ethnic Albanian traditional clothes and men in the uniforms of Liberation Army of Kosovo (OVK). Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said there were more than one mass graves at the said site and an investigation should establish the exact number of victims. He said the ministry had the information that there were bodies from Kosovo interred under a motorway. Asked to say exactly under which motorway the corpses were buried, he first tried to shun the answer but finally added it was the "Brotherhood and Unity" motorway. (hina) sb ms