Suspected mass grave to be excavated in Serbia
RUDNICA, Serbia (AP) — A Serbian official says a mass grave believed to contain 250 bodies of ethnic Albanians who were killed during the 1998-99 Kosovo war will be excavated next week.
The government official dealing with the wartime missing, Veljko Odalovic, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the excavation in the village of Rudnica, near Kosovo's border with Serbia, will take 60 days.
Odalovic says that a house had to be torn down before the work could begin. A nearby site was excavated earlier, but no bodies were found, apparently because Serbs hid the real location.
Some 10,000 people were killed during the conflict between Serbian security troops and Kosovo separatists, and hundreds of bodies were transferred to central Serbia to hide evidence of atrocities.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
