SREBRENICA (AFP) – Bosnian forensic experts have completed their exhumation of a mass grave thought to contain dozens of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, prosecutors said yesterday.

“Twenty-four skeletons and 238 detached human bones have been exhumed from the grave,” Jasna Subotic, spokeswoman for the prosecution office in the eastern city of Tuzla, told AFP.

The exact number of victims would only be known after DNA testing.

The grave is the 12th to have been discovered in Kamenica, a small village near the eastern town of Zvornik, where hundreds of bodies have already been uncovered.

Experts believe the remains belong to Srebrenica victims as the identification of previously uncovered remains from other Kamenica sites proved they all belonged to those killed in the massacre.

Muslim residents abandoned Kamenica, which lies close to the border with Serbia, during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.

Exhumation of another nearby grave, which revealed hundreds of skeleton parts when unearthed last month, was progressing slowly due to the difficult terrain, said Subotic.

Serb forces overran the then UN-protected Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in the final phase of the war, summarily killing some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Europe’s single worst atrocity since World War II.

The victims were initially buried in a dozen mass graves, but were later moved elsewhere in a bid to cover up war crimes.

The remains of thousands of the victims have been exhumed from about 70 mass graves around the ill-fated town, with more than 5,600 people identified by DNA analysis.

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is being tried before a UN tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities including the Srebrenica massacre.