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A forensic expert inspects a fragment of a skull during a mass grave excavation. Archive photo: EPA/Andrej Cukic.

The EU Rule-of-Law Mission in Kosovo, EULEX told BIRN that the remains of five bodies have been found during a search for a mass grave near Gjakova/Djakovica.

“The first exhumation was done in the end of November 2017 and three remains were found… EULEX can confirm that just now they have remains of five different persons,” a EULEX spokesperson told BIRN.

The EU mission said that work is still ongoing at the site.

“EULEX cannot provide any further details before the identification with DNA match reports is done,” it added.

EULEX experts have been working at the suspected war grave site in Gjakova/Djakovica since April last year. The first exhumation was done in the end of November 2017 and the remains of three bodies were initially found.

Governmental missing persons commissions from both Kosovo and Serbia are involved in the process.

The head of the Serbian government’s Missing Persons Commission, Veljko Odalovic, said on Tuesday that the identity of the deceased will be determined by forensic experts, but there is reason to believe that they were Kosovo Serbs who were listed as missing during and after the 1999 war.

“This was the time when Albanian terrorists committed crimes with impunity, arrested people, interrogated them, locked them up and eventually killed many of them,” Odalovic told daily newspaper Politika.

He said that two more locations in the same area suspected to contain human remains will also be examined.

Odalovic’s counterpart in Kosovo, Prenk Gjetaj, described his statement as “tendentious”.

“We strongly oppose such statements. He [Odalovic] cannot know about the victims’ identity before all the tests are done,” Gjetaj told BIRN on Wednesday.

“We are requested to find all the missing persons, no matter which ethnicity the victims belong to, and this is our priority”, he added.

A total of 1,652 people are still on the missing list from the war in 1999 in Kosovo. Most of them are Albanians, but there are also Serbs, Roma and members of other ethnic communities on the list.

Read more:

Kosovo Mother’s Lonely Vigil by Son’s Empty Grave

Kosovo Families Ask For Memorials at Graves in Serbia

Serbia’s Kosovo Cover-Up: Who Hid the Bodies?