SARAJEVO, Aug 20 (AFP) - Forensic experts have exhumed the remains of 73 Muslim civilians from two mass graves in a coal mine dump in eastern Bosnia, suspected victims of Serb atrocities 12 years ago, an official said Friday.
The graves were found earlier this month in an area used as a dump by the Miljevina coal mine, near the eastern town of Foca, said Seid Koso, a member of the Commission for Missing People.
"Pistol and machine-gun bullets and empty cartridges were found with the skeletons, indicating the victims had been executed on the spot," he said.
One grave contained 47 bodies and the other 26, he said. Skeletons on top of the graves were partly charred, suggesting the perpetrators had tried to burn the bodies.
Some bodies were believed to be the inmates of the notorious Serb prison camp in Foca during the early stages of Bosnia`s 1992-95 war.
In mid-1992, Bosnian Serbs backed by the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav People`s Army occupied Foca, 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Sarajevo, as well as the rest of eastern Bosnia which was populated mainly by Muslims.
The prison KP Dom became a place of torture, beatings and numerous killings of non-Serb male civilians.
Koso said commission experts had started excavating a field near KP DOM expecting to find the remains of another group of prisoners.
Meanwhile in northwestern Bosnia, another team of experts exhumed 22 bodies from a grave near the town of Prijedor. More remains were expected to be found as work continued next week.
The remains found near Prijedor are believed to have been inmates of the Bosnian Serbs` Omarska detention camp, images of which shocked the world when they were broadcast in 1992.
Bosnia`s war claimed more than 200,000 lives and left 2.2 million refugees, more than half the Balkan country`s population. Some 25,000 people are still reported missing.
So far some 18,000 bodies have been exhumed from over 300 mass graves throughout the country, most of them Muslims, according to forensic teams.