OVER 40 BODIES FOUND IN OVCARA MASS GRAVE - INVESTIGATOR

VUKOVAR, Sept 25 (Hina) - Three bodies have been exhumed and the remains of 40 to 50 more have been found buried one metre deep in the Ovcara mass grave in Serb-held eastern Croatia, a war crimes tribunal investigator said in Vukovar on Wednesday. Vladimir Dzuro, investigator of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, told a news conference that the victims were not dressed in uniform and that they did not have any military equipment on them. Dzuro said that an exhumation would begin in the coming days, adding that items had been found which would help identify the victims. He said that the exhumation was delayed due to bad weather and that the search was slower than expected because the mass grave was bigger than it had been thought and because investigators wanted to preserve as much evidence as possible. Dzuro ruled out the possibility of postponing the exhumation until spring in the event of a deterioration in weather conditions, adding that the UN administration in the area had covered the 10.9 by 6.5 m mass grave at the request of tribunal forensics. Clyde Snow, an anthropologist who discovered the grave in 1992, had recently visited the site and would organize a postmortem in Zagreb, Dzuro said. (hina) vm 251553 MET sep 96