A CROATIAN human rights group yesterday added substance to reports that rebel Bosnian Serb forces had buried up to 8,000 bodies in a mass grave in northwestern Bosnia.
The Croatian Helsinki Committee (CHC) said it had "reliable sources who have personally seen numerous dead bodies" at a mining pit in a Serb held area.
"On the basis of the information so far, at least 1,000 bodies are known to be buried at the, mine (at Ljubija, north western Bosnia) while other reliable sources suggest. . . as many as, 8,000 bodies might be buried, there," it said.
The committee, an independent organisation generally considered reliable, noted that it was only able to investigate human rights violations within Croatian territory.
But it added "This does not mean that the CHC does not receive information regarding human rights violations in other parts of former Yugoslavia."
The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday that rebel Serbs have been tipping the exhumed remains of dead Muslims, and Croats into a mine in Ljubija.
The paper, quoting non Serb miners in Ljubija, said the Serbs were transferring bodies from several mass graves in the region to the mine where they were often doused with chemicals and reburied under tons of debris.
The committee said most of the bodies at the Ljubija mine were buried there between the early summer of 1992 and late 1993, at the height of the rebel Serb campaign of "ethnic cleansing".
The committee, which provided a map of the site with its statement, said the road leading to the mine had been "destroyed in three places in order to deny access to the pit."
The main pit is 25 metres deep with a surface diameter of 80 to 100 metres. The bodies in the pit were covered in coal dust "to accelerate the process of carbonisation which in turn decreases the probability of identifying the victims buried there," it alleged.
In Geneva, the United Nations's rapporteur on human rights in the former Yugoslavia, Ms Elizabeth Rehn, said she intended to visit sites of suspected mass graves in Bosnia this month.
A Zagreb spokesman for the multinational, peace implementation Force said for would "investigate" the reports of mass graves.
Meanwhile in Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb leaders stepped back from a crisis with Nato peacekeepers yesterday when they lifted a threat to evacuate Serb Sarajevo.
Instead, they asked the EU mediator, Mr Carl Bildt, to appeal to people to stay in their homes.
Some 70,000 Serbs were poised to flee the Bosnian capital burning their houses behind them after Nato peacekeepers ignored pleas to delay the hand over of their districts to the Muslim led government.
The Bosnian Serb parliament leader, Mr Momcilo Krajisnik, backed away from his deadline of yesterday after meeting Mr Bildt.