Human bones found in search of a mass grave near Gjakova

The first exhumation was performed in late November 2017 and three bones were found. E USLEX can confirm that they now have the remains of five different people,” said a spokesman for EULEX for BIRN.

The EU mission still continues at the dig site.

“EULEX cannot provide further details before DNA identification is made,” he added.

EULEX experts have been working at the site of the alleged Gjakova war grave since April last year. The first exhumation took place in late November 2017 and originally the remains of three bodies.

Government commissions for missing persons from Kosovo and Serbia are involved in the process.

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

“This was the time when Albanian terrorists committed crimes with impunity, arrested people, questioned them, closed them and then killed many of them,” Odalovic told the daily Politika newspaper.

He said two other countries in the same area allegedly containing human bones would also be considered.

Odalovici's Kosovo counterpart, Prenk Loka, described his statement as <x0-tendentious”.

We strongly challenge such statements. Odalovic cannot know the identity of the victims before all tests are carried out,” said Loka on Wednesday.

We are required to find all missing persons, regardless of the victims' ethnic affiliation, and that is our priority,” he added.

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