34 BODIES FROM OVCARA MASS GRAVE IDENTIFIED

ZAGREB, Feb 25 (Hina) - Thirty-four bodies exhumed from the Ovcara mass grave near the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar have been positively identified, head of the Croatian forensic team Davor Strinovic told a news conference in Zagreb on Tuesday. About 200 patients from the Vukovar hospital were summarily executed by Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary forces after they captured the Danube river town in November 1991, and were buried on the nearby Ovcara farm. The mass execution of Vukovar hospital patients later prompted the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal to issue indictments against three high-ranking Yugoslav army officers. Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Kostovic said that Croatian experts had taken over the identification of victims from Hague tribunal experts earlier this year after the preliminary identification of 60 persons. Brigadier Ante Vucic of the Defence Ministry said that the victims from the Ovcara mass grave were being buried with all military honours. Eleven victims had been buried so far and two more would be buried in the eastern town of Vinkovci later in the day, he added. The names of all the identified victims were on the government's missing persons list, said the head of the Croatian government commission for detainees and missing persons, Colonel Ivan Grujic. He added that Croatia was still looking for 2,440 missing persons. Grujic said that most of the victims would be buried in Vukovar according to the wishes of their families. Vucic added that until their return to that town, which is to remain under UN transitional administration until this summer, the remains of victims would be buried in Zagreb's Mirogoj Cemetery. Kostovic's adviser, Neven Henigsberg, presented a government programme of psychological aid to the families of missing and detained persons which envisages visits by 60 Croatian experts to the families. Kostovic said that the Croatian government had demanded from the UN Transitional Administration and the Hague tribunal a film on the Ovcara exhumation shot by a British ITN television crew, but that it still had not received it. (hina) vm jn 251616 MET feb 97