DNA tests identify Kosovo war dead
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Your support makes all the difference.The bodies of 16 people killed in the Kosovo war have been identified by DNA tests.
The technology is being used to help relatives find the remains of the more than 4,000 people who remain unaccounted for, nearly three years after the end of the war.
The announcement was made by Jose Pablo Baraybar, the head of the UN Office on Missing Persons and Forensics in Kosovo. His office is cooperating with the Inter- national Commission for Missing Persons, based in neighbouring Bosnia, on the DNA project.
The two centres analyse and compare DNA samples taken from bodies unearthed in mass graves with blood samples collected from people whose relatives are missing.
DNA matching has resulted in almost 1,000 identifications in Bosnia this year, a United Nations statement said.
Edwin Huffine, the director of the International Commission for Missing Persons' forensic sciences programmes, urged families with missing relatives to submit blood samples so their DNA could be compared to that of exhumed bodies.
"This is the beginning of a large-scale DNA-led identification process for Kosovo," Mr Huffine said.
Kosovo, legally a part of Yugoslavia, has been administered by the UN and Nato since June 1999 after the Allied bombing campaign that halted ethnic cleansing.
Conflict over the province during 1998-1999 left an estimated 10,000 people dead, the majority of whom were ethnic Albanians.
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