Mass grave unearthed

last updated 8 January 2015

Srebrenica

U.N. forensic experts this week began exhuming bodies from what is thought to be Bosnia’s largest mass grave. The site, at Crni Vrh, could contain several hundred of the 8,000 corpses of Muslim men and boys slaughtered by Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica in 1995. That town was designated as a U.N. “safe area” and was supposed to be protected by Dutch peacekeepers. Instead it became the site of the worst European atrocity since World War II. The U.N. was tipped off to the whereabouts of the grave by someone who witnessed the burials—but officials haven’t said whether the witness was a participant or a bystander.