Remains found at possible mass grave in Kosovo: PM

Kosovo forensic teams have discovered seven bodies at a potential wartime mass grave in the country’s north that was discovered recently, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on Saturday.

“The remains of seven people have been found so far,” he said, adding that he believed 23 people might be buried.

The 1998-1999 war between independence-seeking ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian armed forces killed around 13,000 people and left 4,000 missing.

Decades of work to uncover mass graves have found the remains of thousands, but 1,600 are still missing.

Earlier this week authorities said they had discovered human remains at the site but had yet to confirm whether it was a wartime mass burial site.

The country’s chief special prosecutor, Blerim Isufaj, who visited the dig site last Thursday, cautioned that identification would take time and urged patience.

Kurti said that “most likely these are remains of 23 Albanians who have been violently abducted, executed” in the spring of 1999.

He had earlier said on social media that he believed the victims were “intellectuals from Mitrovica, doctors, professors and human rights activists” who had disappeared on April 19, 1999.

Two Serbs were earlier arrested in connection with the case, the chief prosecutor said in a statement without providing further details.

Efforts to recover war missing persons have been slow, as tensions between Belgrade – which doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence – and Pristina remain strained.

But in January, both countries under EU auspices agreed to a joint commission to accelerate the search for war missing.