OVER 2000 BODIES EXHUMED FROM MASS GRAVES IN BOSNIA

( Editorial: --> 7750 ) TUZLA, Dec 11 (Hina) - So far 36 mass graves and several hundred individual graves have been dug up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, chairman of the commission for missing persons Amor Masovic said in the northeastern town of Tuzla on Thursday. The largest number of mass graves was dug up in the Tuzlansko- Podrinjski and Bosansko-Podrinjski cantons. Four mass graves were dug up in the Brcko area. More than 2,000 bodies were exhumed, of which 1,031 were identified. More than 85 per cent of all exhumed bodies, except those recovered from mass graves in the eastern Srebrenica area, were identified. Masovic said that 1,101 bodies had been recovered from mass and individual graves in the Srebrenica area, only a tenth of the total number of missing persons from that area. On the entire territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina about 27,700 persons were registered as missing, most of them in July 1995 after Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected Moslem enclave of Srebrenica. (hina) vm jn 112217 MET dec 97