Grisly Task: U.N. Investigators Unearth Remains Of War Victims Bones, Skulls, Clothing Found At Site Of Mass Graves In Bosnia

Bones, skulls and bits of rotting clothes - the remains of 1992 war victims - emerged from the mud Friday as teams began digging to uncover the secrets of Bosnia’s killing fields.

A senior U.N. investigator toured one of the grave sites, a grisly start to his efforts to trace an estimated 27,000 missing people.

“It’s a huge task,” admitted Manfred Nowak, the top missing-persons expert for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. He came to Jajce to confer with local Croat officials and visit one of two graves on the city’s outskirts.

At the site visited by Nowak - a muck-filled ditch by a hillside dirt road - two coroners, Croat soldiers and workmen dug up skulls, leg bones and rotting clothing. Five sets of remains were uncovered, but officials said up to nine people could be buried there.

Dark green body bags were carefully laid out on a small grassy knoll near the ditch, which was fenced off with yellow tape. Wearing rubber gloves, the team dug into the ground with picks and shovels, then dusted mud and dirt off the remains before placing them in the bags. Croat soldiers in camouflage stood by.

Local officials said the victims, all Bosnian Croats, were riding in a truck that was struck by a Serb shell as Serb forces closed in on the northwestern town in 1992.

But officials were not certain whether they were killed outright by the shell or had been executed later by Serbs who came upon the disabled truck.

At the other site, on a mountainside field overlooking the town, Bosnian Croat army officers said they believed the soldier whose remains were found was captured by the Serbs in 1992, then executed. But the officers were vague when asked how they knew this, saying they had only received a witness’ account secondhand.

Nowak’s mission - in conjunction with the Red Cross - is distinct and potentially at odds with the efforts of the international war crimes tribunal to locate mass graves containing bodies of war crimes victims.

“My mandate is purely humanitarian,” Nowak said. “The tribunal’s investigators may only need to dig up a few bodies from a mass grave to determine a crime was committed, but I’m interested in identifying every individual, so I can tell families, ‘your son, your husband, your wife is there.”’

Local officials reportedly have found grave sites near Jajce that contain many more bodies, but Nowak did not visit these Friday. A Bosnian Croat official said up to 46 bodies could be buried in graves in the area.

Nowak heads today to the northern city of Banja Luka for talks with Bosnian Serb leaders there, then proceeds to a nearby mine where bodies of executed Muslims and Croats reportedly were buried.

Nowak said the Serbs had pledged to cooperate and did not object to his visit to the mine.

On Thursday, Nowak visited a field near the town of Glogova in eastern Bosnia, site of a suspected mass grave of some of the missing from Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave overrun by Bosnian Serbs last July.

Up to 7,000 bodies may be buried around Srebrenica, U.S. officials say. Bosnia itself has an estimated 300 mass graves.

In the northern city of Tuzla on Friday, several hundred Muslim women smashed windows at a government building and tried to storm it, demanding more information on their missing loved ones.

About 50 other Muslim women, former residents of Srebrenica, traveled Friday to Sarajevo to bring their grievances personally to President Alija Izetbegovic.

Bosnia, as it emerges from nearly four years of war, has more missing people than any country in the world, Nowak said, adding that his list could have a “a very small minority” of people still being held prisoner.

Government officials say up to 1,000 of the missing Muslims are still held by Serbs in camps, but this has not been confirmed.