BELGRADE, Serbia, May 11 (UPI) -- Serbian authorities discovered a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of around 250 Kosovo Albanians.
The grave site is located near the small town of Raska, close to the border with Kosovo, BBC News reports. Officials said the remains were buried under a building that was constructed to hide the grave.
The victims are believed to have been killed during a 1998-99 conflict between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo. The conflict led to a NATO bombing campaign that drove out Serbian forces and ultimately in Kosovo's independence in 2008.
Serbia's war crimes prosecutor told the BBC that Eulex, the EU police mission in Kosovo gave Belgrade the key tip for the location of the grave. Serbian authorities will soon start exhuming the bodies.
Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic said the discovery proves that Belgrade is ready to uncover the crimes committed in Kosovo, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reports. She added all perpetrators would pursued and punished -- regardless of their nationality.
The Kosovar government has also welcomed Serbia's efforts in searching the grave, which is the sixth such site discovered since the end of the war, and the fourth on Serbian territory.
In 2001, officials found the bodies of around 800 Kosovar Albanians in several locations in Serbia in 2001, including police and military sites.
Experts estimate that more than 10,000 people -- ethnic Serbs and Albanians -- were killed in the conflict. Nearly 2,000 people are still missing.
Vlastimir Djordjevic, a top Serbian police official during the Kosovo conflict, is believed to be behind hiding the bodies. He stands trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, charged with several counts of deportation, persecution and murder.
Also on trial is Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He denies all charges and has decided to defend himself.
One of the key figures in the earlier 1992-95 war in Yugoslavia that left more than 100,000 people dead, he was arrested in 2008 after hiding in Belgrade for 13 years.
The prosecution says the former leader of the Republica Srpska and commander of the Bosnian Serb army is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians.
Under his reign the Bosnian Serb army shelled Sarajevo during the city's siege that left around 12,000 dead.
He allegedly organized the targeted killings at Srebrenica in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Serbian forces in July 1995 killed more than 8,000 teenagers and men. The event is considered the worst massacre in post-World War II European history.
