Spain orders Franco victims exhumed

MADRID, June 13 (UPI) -- Seven bodies of victims of execution-style killings dating to Spain's Civil War have been exhumed from a mass grave as part of a court order.

The men were reportedly executed in 1936 by supporters of former Spanish strongman Gen. Francisco Franco, El Pais newspaper reported this week.

According to legal experts, the exhumations of the bodies could mark the beginning of inquiries into thousands of deaths ordered by Franco during the war.

The families of civil war victims and historians contend that Franco ordered the deaths of thousands of opponents of his hardline regime. Their bodies, they contend, were dumped in unidentified mass graves.

In 2008, a Spanish judge ordered that several mass graves be exhumed and the remains be examined by Spanish health officials.