A mass grave in Slovenia believed to hold up to 300 victims killed after World War II by the former communist regime has been discovered in the country’s east, authorities said on Wednesday.
“We’ve found the mummified remains of between 200 and 300 people,” Marko Strovs, head of the government’s military graves department, told journalists.
He added the victims appeared to be “killed with gas” since there were no visible signs of wounds from firearms.
Investigators and historians on Tuesday removed concrete walls built after World War II to close off the Huda Jama cave near Lasko, some 90km east of the capital Ljubljana. They then discovered the remains.
The investigation of the Huda Jama cave started last August as part of a long-running probe of more than 500 suspected mass graves throughout Slovenia.
They are believed to contain the remains of pro-Nazi collaborators who sought to escape from the former Yugoslavia’s communist regime in 1945. Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia before becoming independent in 1991.
The identities of the victims in Huda Jama remain unclear. However, accounts from local residents indicate they were pro-Nazi collaborators from Slovenia or Croatia, said the head of the Slovenian Research Center for National Reconciliation, Andreja Valic.
“Current information, based on oral testimony, indicates that the slain people could have been Slovenian or Croatian citizens,” Valic told Slovenian news agency STA.
State prosecutor Barbara Brezigar also visited the site and described seeing the remains as “horrible.”
“It is one of the most shocking things you could see in your life,” Brezigar told journalists.
She said any investigation into the crimes would be difficult since most of those responsible were likely dead.
Judicial forensic Joze Balazic, who took part in the excavation of the mass grave, said at the entrance piles of military shoes were found.
“It seems that they [the victims] had to undress and take off their shoes before they were killed. We did not see any small-size or children’s shoes,” Balazic told reporters, suggesting most of the victims were soldiers.
Most of the bodies were found in a 15m-long and 2.5m-wide underground passage situated some 400m from the entrance to the cave.
He added that there are another two passages in the cave where more bodies could be found, but that these will only be investigated in a month’s time, after the first one discovered on Tuesday is documented and a way through is opened.
Strovs explained the good condition in which the remains were found was because of the fact that the cave had been sealed with several walls of concrete separated by layers of barren soil.
“At the end, we came to a long passage that was all in white. Soon we understood the white mass were the bodies that had been all covered with lime,” Strovs said of the gruesome discovery.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS