SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Investigators began wading through tons of trash at a garbage dump in southeastern Bosnia on Thursday to uncover the remains of local villagers missing after the war and believed buried underneath.
At least 60 people are believed by investigators to be buried at the site at Nevesinje, 41 miles south of the capital, Sarajevo.
Excavations began after work was finished the night before on another mass grave in the nearby town of Visegrad, where investigators discovered a total of 50 bodies on the banks of the river Drina after waters receded.
The bodies at both sites are believed to be those of local Bosnian Muslims, killed by Serb forces at the beginning of the 1992-95 war.
Amor Masovic, the head of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons, said the bones found at the Visegrad site will be reassembled - ''since the river mixed them all up'' - then the remains would be identified.
Masovic said that at the garbage dump site where his team began work, the pit is some 40 yards deep ''and has the form of an hour glass.'' He lowered himself into the pit by rope.
The bodies here are presumed to belong to some of the 150 Muslims that are missing from Nevesinje.
''It will take us several weeks to deal with this one,'' Masovic said. An estimated 1,800 truckloads - or about 9000 tons of trash - has to be removed before the bodies can be exhumed. Some of the trash is continually burning, and firefighters had to be called before the investigation could begin.
Some 200,000 people died during the war here. Over 20,000 remain missing, of which 90 percent are Bosnian Muslims. The remains of the missing are gradually being found in numerous mass graves throughout the country.
