BOGOTA — Investigators in Colombia are exhuming bodies at a cemetery where at least 50 victims related to a notorious military scandal are believed buried, officials said Saturday.

The Special Peace Tribunal announced that forensic scientists have exhumed the remains of seven individuals thus far.

Officials believe the military killed dozens of poor men and buried them in the Las Mercedes de Dabeiba Catholic Cemetery in Antioquia.

The deaths are part of the “false positives” scandal in which troops killed civilians and then dressed them up as guerrillas in exchange for extra pay and other perks.

Colombia’s military has been blamed for as many as 5,000 extrajudicial killings at the height of the country’s armed conflict in the mid-2000s.

The exhumations are part of efforts by the Special Peace Tribunal to document what happened and to find and identify those who disappeared.

The Associated Press