Bosnian forensic experts on Tuesday recovered remains of three dozen victims in a mass grave covered with coal mine waste and said it could hold many of hundreds of Muslims missing from this area for 12 years.

“These victims are men and clothes and shoes found inside indicate that they are civilians,” said Amor Masovic, head of the Commission for Missing People of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation, whose team led the exhumation work.

“According to our information, they are inmates from the notorious KP Dom prison and inhabitants of Foca, Miljevina and (nearby village of) Jelec killed in April and May of 1992 while inmates were killed in September, October,” Masovic said.

About 1 500 Muslims in the ethnically-mixed municipality of Foca, some 40 kms (24 miles) southeast of Sarajevo, went missing at the start of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war in the first wave of "ethnic cleansing" by Serb forces, ex-Yugoslav army and paramilitaries.

Some 600, including more than 300 inmates from the KP Dom detention camp in Foca, remain unaccounted for, according to figures from a Sarajevo institute investigating war crimes. Last week, 28 bodies were found in another mass grave nearby.

The Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia has convicted several Serbs for crimes committed in the Foca area. Others are either awaiting trial or are at large.

The commission team found 35 bodies two metres below the surface after two days of work at a small section of the waste disposal site of the coal mine in Miljevina, near Foca.

Court officials, forensic experts and workers sifted through well preserved human bones and skulls, clothes and shoes after a backhoe removed the upper layer of earth from a 10 by 10 metres (yards) section of the plateau.

“At this micro-location of the site we expect to find about 60 bodies but the total area we are going to search covers the size of 10 soccer fields,” Masovic said, but added it was difficult to say how many victims could be found in the end.

<B>Ten Soccer Fields</B>

He said spent bullet casings found in the grave indicated that some victims were killed at the site.

Avdo Zametica and his wife Zubejda, who returned to a remote village of Jelec after the war, hope the excavations will uncover news about the fate of their twin sons.

After capture by Serb forces and detention at several locations, witnesses told them the brothers were last seen in mid-September of 1992 in KP Dom when they were told to pack their things and prepare for prisoner exchange.

“Every day that passes by is more and more difficult,” Zubejda said sobbing, sitting in front of their half-reconstructed house in the scenic village.

Western peace officials say punishing perpetrators for crimes committed in a war in which 200 000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and finding thousands of missing people is one of the main conditions for reconciliation.

They also stress this is necessary for creating a secure environment for the return of those who fled. But in Foca, often called a “black spot”, this process is slow.

It had a mixed population of close to 40 000 before the war with a slight Muslim majority. Only 3 500 have returned to rural areas.

In Jelec, for example, only about a tenth of the pre-war’s 700 Muslims have returned, mostly elderly

<B>Nedim Dervisbegovic </B>