By Radul Radovanovic - The Associated Press

CANCARI, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A team searching eastern Bosnia’s countryside for mass graves dug during the 1992-95 war said yesterday it had detected geological patterns that would help in locating graves in the future.

The International Commission on Missing Persons, which has been trying to find and identify war victims by DNA matching, presented its new methods for locating and mapping sites during a presentation at a mass grave in Cancari village, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Sarajevo.

The Cancari gravesite, which has yet to be excavated, was one of 16 studied by experts in satellite imagery, geology and forensic archaeology in May for the Bosnia-based commission.

“We looked at a series of technologies that can be used in combination to help to find mass graves,” team leader Professor John Hunter said. “We are not talking about some kind of magical grave-detector, but about a system of techniques that will find patterns and differences in the ground that we know are associated with mass graves,” he said. “This kind of work is all about finding those clues.”

The researchers, from the United States and the United Kingdom, found that the mass graves were characteristically located in river valleys, the corner of meadows or fields, within 100 meters (328 feet) from a road or on a slope from a road. Dense weeds and grasses usually grew on top. Tests of soil resistance to electricity also revealed patterns that helped in locating graves and establishing their depths and compositions.

Satellite imagery and spectral analysis, which measures changes in ground surface composition, have also been used recently to locate mass graves in Iraq.

While spectral analysis was found to be more effective in a desert environment, such as Iraq’s, satellite imagery that revealed patterns of plant grown was more useful in countries such as Bosnia.

The new methods, which do not disturb the grave, also foil any efforts to keep grave locations secret. In several cases in Bosnia, bodies were moved in order to cover up the evidence of mass killings.