THE HAGUE, Oct 1 (AFP) - The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) on Friday started collecting blood samples from refugees from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, in order to identify thousands of nameless victims exhumed from mass graves across the former Yugoslavia.
Teams from the commission will operate drop-in centres in cities across Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Switzerland until October 10, to allow refugees to give blood samples.
Similar operations had already been conducted within the former Yugoslavia, including in Bosnia where the ICMP is headquartered, but it is the first time the commission had taken its work outside the region.
The procedure takes just a few seconds -- a few drops collected on a piece of white paper are enough to obtain a DNA identification.
Some 25,000 people are still declared as missing following the Balkan wars, including around 20,000 in Bosnia-Hercegovina alone, according to ICMP figures.
According to Asta Zinbo, director of the ICMP's civil society initiatives program, refugees from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo or Serbia can greatly increase their chances of tracking down missing relatives by giving blood.
The commission hopes to gather up to 10,000 samples during the operation, which could help to identify between 3,000 and 4,000 bodies.
The ICMP is a inter-governmental organisation founded in 1996 to help tackle the issue of missing persons across the war-torn Balkans.