303 BODIES OF WAR VICTIMS CARRIED TO TUZLA MORGUE

TUZLA, Feb 5 (Hina) - International War Crimes Tribunal experts on Wednesday handed over to Bosnia-Herzegovina's authorities 303 unidentified bodies of dead Srebrenica citizens who were killed when Serb forces overran a former UN safe area in northeastern Bosnia in summer 1995. The bodies were exhumed from two mass graves at Pilice and Lazete, northeastern Bosnia last year. The remains of those victims had been kept in buildings of the 'Kaltekst' textile factory in Kalesija, about 20 kms east of Tuzla, since July 1996. On Wednesday they were transferred to a morgue in Tuzla. Amor Masovic, the head of Bosnia's commission for missing persons, said that the identification of those 303 victims would start when data on more than 8,000 missing Srebrenica residents was gathered. According to Masovic, first bodies in those two mass graves were uncovered under a 4-metre layer of the ground, and there are many not intact bodies which indicates that graves were dug up. The damaged remains would make the identification more difficult, he added. Experts of Bosnian Government and International Tribunal have so far exhumed more than 1, 928 bodies from 31 mass graves and several hundred individual graves, and identified 1031 victims out of them. In the Tuzla morgue and the forensic institute there are now 713 bodies uncovered from graves around Srebrenica. (hina) jn mš 052044 MET feb 97