On Monday morning, the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH began searching a lake at the Vihovici mine near Mostar, suspecting that it may be the site of a mass grave containing remains of more than 80 war victims.

The Director of Bosnia’s Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia, Mujo Hadziomerovic, said that it is believed that the remains of between 80 and 100 war victims from Mostar were thrown into the artificial lake in Vihovici.

Hadziomerovic said that the Institute has so far discovered the remains of 80 percent of the missing persons in BiH. He explained that the remains of 24,500 have been identified, while a total of 27,000 were exhumed, which means that a large number of persons whose identity has not been determined are in mortuaries throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We are still missing 7,500 people, out of a total of 11,000 who are being searched for in the territory of the former Yugoslavia,” he said.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the BiH Institute for the Missing Persons, Emza Fazlic, said that 465 people have been exhumed from several mass and individual graves in the area of Mostar to date, and that the search for another 202 people is ongoing.

“According to operational information and witness statements, there is a mass grave containing 80 to 100 people at the site of the Vihovici mine. Unknown persons, mostly from Mostar who were killed there in 1993,” she said.