BELGRADE, Serbia — A mass grave has been discovered in Serbia believed to contain the bodies of 250 ethnic Albanians who were killed in Kosovo during the 1998-99 Serbian crackdown on separatists, officials said today.
It is the sixth mass grave that has been found in Serbia since 2001, and it will be the second largest if that estimate is confirmed, the officials said.
Hundreds of bodies of slain ethnic Albanians have been exhumed in Serbia and returned to Kosovo since President Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power in a popular revolt in 2000.
Serbia has since tried to deal with its wartime past as it seeks European Union membership, which requires the prosecution of those who committed atrocities during the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. Milosevic died in 2006 while facing a genocide trial at the U.N. tribunal, but his policies still have strong support among ultranationalists in Serbia.
“According to witness testimonies, there are 250 bodies of Kosovo Albanians inside” the newly discovered grave, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said at a news conference today in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital.
He said exhumations would begin soon at the site, which was discovered based on witness accounts and in cooperation with a European Union mission in Kosovo.
Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor’s office said the grave is located in a hilly, rural area of Rudnica, near the town of Raska, 108 miles south of Belgrade.
Aerial photos of the site showed a house and a small parking lot near a road nestled between the hills. Vukcevic’s deputy, Bruno Vekaric, said the mass grave is believed to be located beneath the building and the parking lot.
Officials did not say when the grave was discovered.
During the Kosovo war, the bodies of Kosovo victims were brought to Serbia by Milosevic’s regime in an attempt to cover up the atrocities against civilians.
Some 1,860 ethnic Albanians are still missing from the Kosovo war, many believed to have been buried by Serb forces in similar mass graves in Serbia.
“Serbia has the democratic capacity to face what happened,” Vukcevic said. “It is our obligation to the victims who have the right to bury the dead.”
About 10,000 people were killed during the Kosovo conflict, which erupted after Serbia moved to crush a rebellion there by independence-seeking ethnic Albanian rebels. The brutality of Serbia’s crackdown prompted NATO to bomb the country in 1999, forcing Milosevic to pull out his troops. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Belgrade refuses to recognize it.
In Kosovo today, officials urged Serbia to face up to its past and overcome its troubled relations with Kosovo Albanians.
Kosovo deputy Prime Minister, Rame Manaj, claimed the discovery was a result of pressure from the EU.
“This comes too late, but this pressure from the international community is welcome as it is the only force that can move things from point zero,” Manaj said of the discovery of the bodies.
“It is painful news,” said Xhavit Beqiri, the spokesman for Kosovo’s president.
“We suspect there are more Kosovo victims in other such mass graves around Serbia which Belgrade has always known about, but has selectively unearthed them to reduce the scope of the crimes committed in Kosovo,” Beqiri said.
Vukcevic urged Kosovo’s authorities to investigate the fate of about 500 Kosovo Serbs who he said remain unaccounted for since the 1998-99 war after revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians.
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