FIRST BODY EXHUMED FROM MASS GRAVE AT OVCARA

VUKOVAR, Sept 11 (Hina) - The first body was on Wednesday exhumed from a mass grave on Ovcara. The body belonged to a middle-aged man, a civilian, with wounds on his head and neck and was buried 60 centimetres deep, a forensic expert of the International Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in the Hague (ICTY), Bill Haglund, told a news conference at the UNTAES headquarters in Vukovar. #L# After the surface layer of earth had been removed on the edges of the grave whose length and width were estimated at six and eight metres, the remains of about 10 bodies had been found, Haglund said. The bodies would begin to be extracted after they were completely uncovered and when their position in relation to other bodies in the grave had been established, he said. Haglund stressed that the size of the mass grave had been estimated through analyses of changes in the composition and colour of the earth, and recalled that two human skulls with religious markings had been found on the surface of the grave in 1992. The markings pointed to the fact that they were Catholics. Asked whether wounded people from the Vukovar hospital had been buried at Ovcara, ICTY legal advisor Clint Wiliamson said that based on analyses so far, it was too early to say whether the persons were wounded persons from the Vukovar hospital. After the investigation the Tribunal will have enough evidence to establish the facts about the events at Ovcara. The identification would surely play a great role in supporting the evidence which we are to obtain by that time, Wiliamson said. The ICTY experts began the exhumation of the mass grave as part of an investigation of three officers of the Yugoslav army who had ordered mass executions of civilians, soldiers and wounded persons after their occupation of Vukovar in November 1991. (hina) lm jn 111612 MET sep 96