Mass Funeral for Victims of Bosnia’s Koricanske Stijene Killings

The Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina said that a collective funeral will be held at Vedro Polje stadium in the village of Hambarine near Prijedor on July 20, and the victims' bodies will then be buried at locations chosen by their families.

"It still cannot be said with certainty how many people will be buried, considering that the families have still not officially identified the mortal remains for which the results of DNA analysis have arrived," Missing Persons Institute spokesperson Emza Fazlic told BIRN.

According to the Missing Persons Institute, during the last exhumation conducted in the Koricanske Stijene area in 2017, a total of 135 people's remains were exhumed and more than 1,000 samples sent for DNA analysis.

Fazlic explained that the tests carried out so far have established 62 identities, while a certain number of samples showed that the remains found in the grave belonged to victims who had been identified previously.

"For now, 18 families have confirmed they would be present at the identification once it has been scheduled and will most probably give consent to burial of their family members," Fazlic said.

Koricanske Stijene (Koricani Cliffs) are steep cliffs on Mount Vlasic and were the site of a massacre of some 200 Bosniak and Croat civilians by Bosnian Serb forces in August 1992.

During the war, Naila Bajric's husband Serif and 21-year-old son Zafir were killed at Koricanske Stijene. Her husband's body, as well as a part of her son's body, were found during the most recent exhumation at the site.

"I found my son in 2005. Two bones. I buried those two bones," Bajric told BIRN.

Bajric recently visited the Sejkovaca Identification Centre in Sanski Most to see the remains of her...