The Sarajevo-headquartered International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) reported on Sunday that based on reliable data, it could be estimated that some 8,100 Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) went missing after the Serb forces, under command of Ratko Mladic, raided the enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995.
"By analyzing DNA profiles extracted from bone samples of exhumed mortal remains and matching them to the DNA profiles obtained from blood samples donated by relatives of the missing, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has so far revealed the identity of 6,598 persons missing from the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica," the commission said in a press release.
"In an effort to identify the victims ICMP has collected blood samples from 21,566 Srebrenica victims’ survivors. The number of reported missing for whom ICMP has blood samples as well as the matching rate between DNA profiles extracted from these bone and blood samples leads ICMP to support an estimate of around 8,100 individuals missing from the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. This leads us to a conclusion that the bodies of approximately 1,500 persons still need to be found," the press release reads.
Since 2001 when it started applying DNA matching for identification of victims, ICMP has made DNA-identifications for 16,231 persons in the Western Balkans, of which 13,581 are in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone.
