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2 Serb veterans arrested in Bosnia for wartime killing of 78 civilians

Bosnian police on Tuesday arrested two former ethnic Serb soldiers over their role in the killing of 78 Muslim civilians at the start of the country's 1990s war, prosecutors said. The two men are suspected of "crimes against humanity" as they took part in the shooting of the civilians in June 1992 in western Bosnia

Agencies and A News WORLD
Published October 27,2020
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Authorities in Bosnia have detained two people suspected of taking part in the killing of at least 78 civilians during the 1992-95 war, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

The two men were apprehended in the area of Banja Luka, the main town in the Bosnian Serb-run part of the country, according to a statement.

Former members of the Bosnian Serb army Bosko Uncanin, 51, and Dragan Despot, 56, along with others lined up the Muslims in front of a primary school in Velagici where they were detained.

They are suspected of crimes against humanity over June 1992 killings in the northwestern village of Velagici. Bosnian Serbs slaughtered imprisoned Bosniak civilians, who are mainly Muslims, outside the school building with automatic weapons.

The victims' bodies were later driven away in trucks and dumped in a mass grave that was exhumed in 1996.

More than 100,000 people died during the war in Bosnia, which erupted when Bosnian Serbs rebelled over the country's independence from the former Yugoslavia and moved to carve up a mini-state of their own, expelling Bosniaks and Croats from the territory.