Bosnia mass grave excation

ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION

An excavation is underway of what may be the largest mass grave of ethnic cleansing victims in Bosnia.

The existence of a site was known for years but the exact location was covered up by a Serb wall of silence, the state's missing persons office said.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague has sentenced 16 Bosnian Serbs to a total of 230 years in prison for atrocities in the Prijedor area of northwest Bosnia where the Tomasica site is located. But not all mass graves have been found.

Bosnia's Institute for Missing Persons had known for years about the Tomasica site but the exact venue and details of the victims were known only to local Bosnian Serb witnesses who had remained silent about it since the end of the 1992-95 war.

At Tomasica, forensic experts have been recovering bodies of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats killed by separatist Serbs in one of the worst ethnic cleansing campaigns aimed at driving out non-