This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Investigators say they have unearthed more than 100 skeletons from a mass grave in the northern Sri Lankan town of Mannar, where Tamil guerrillas and state security forces clashed during the country’s 26-year civil war.



More bodies are being recovered each day from the site, which is already among the largest mass graves found in the country. About 50% of the trench is still to be excavated.

“We have found 101 people and already moved 96 individual skeletons from the trench,” said Raj Somadeva, an archaeologist working on the site.

Unlike a mass grave previously discovered in central town of Matale, where the bodies were laid neatly beside each other, the remains in Mannar appeared to have been dumped, making the process of identifying individual skeletons more difficult.

As many as 10 skeletons appeared to belong to juveniles, Somadeva said. The team also found ceramic pottery, pieces of porcelain and metallic objects that could be jewellery.



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The remains, discovered about three metres below ground, will undergo forensic analysis to determine how many individuals were buried and when they died. A court ordered the excavation in May after workers stumbled on bones while digging the foundations for a building.

It is being funded by the Office of Missing Persons, a government agency established in 2016 to trace more than 20,000 people estimated to have gone missing during the civil war, mainly fought between the government and militant Tamil nationalists.

Government forces were regularly accused of carrying out abductions and large-scale killings during the war. Tamil separatist groups including the Tamil Tigers have also been accused of atrocities against civilians and opposition fighters.

The war ended in 2009 with a series of ruthless offensives by the Sri Lankan military. The UN estimates 40,000 civilians were killed in the final weeks of the conflict and accused both sides of “horrific” human rights abuses.

Human rights groups have speculated that there may be dozens of mass graves across Sri Lanka. More than 150 bodies were discovered in 2012 in the grounds of a government hospital in Matale. A judge described the site as a crime scene, and pointed to evidence the bodies were about 25 years old, suggesting they may have been buried during a leftist insurrection against the government. An investigation has stalled.

Another mass grave was found in Mannar in February 2014. Workers preparing to lay a water pipe discovered more than 30 skeletons buried in layers near a well-known temple.

There have also been instances of families stumbling on mass graves in their gardens in former conflict areas.

The UN estimates that between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed during the conflict.