Mass grave in Bosnia yields more than 1,000 slaughtered
Kamenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina – The bodies of more than 1,000 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have been exhumed from the largest mass grave found to date in Bosnia-Herzegovina, forensic experts said Thursday.
Experts began digging in June near the eastern Bosnian village of Kamenica, close to the border with Serbia, where they have found eight other mass graves. The team has exhumed 144 complete and 1,009 partial skeletons.
“This is the largest mass grave so far found,” said Murat Hurtic, head of the forensics team.
Along with the remains, experts found 14 documents indicating the victims were killed in the Srebrenica massacre, which became the site of Europe’s worst mass execution since World War II when Serb troops in 1995 overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, which the United Nations had declared a safe zone. As many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slain.
Of the 3,500 bodies of Srebrenica victims excavated so far, 2,500 have been identified through DNA and some 2,000 buried in a cemetery in the Srebrenica suburb of Potocari, where the victims last were seen alive before being rounded up by Serb soldiers and taken for execution.
MOSCOW
Divers spot wreckage of famed WWII sub
Russian divers have spotted the wreckage of a legendary U.S. submarine that was lost in the Pacific in 1943, a Russian news agency reported Thursday.
The ITAR-Tass news agency said that a diving team from the Far Eastern State Technological University in Vladivostok found the USS Wahoo in the La Perouse Strait and took pictures of it during a recent expedition. It didn’t give more details.
Under the command of Dudley “Mush” Morton, the Wahoo became one of the most famous U.S. submarines of World War II. With 19 Japanese ships sunk, Morton was ranked as one of the war’s top three sub skippers.
The Wahoo was sunk by the Japanese navy as it returned from its seventh patrol on Oct. 11, 1943. All 79 crewmen died.
MEXICO CITY
Observers saw fraud in Mexico election
An international nonprofit group that observed Mexico’s disputed presidential election said Thursday that it had witnessed evidence of fraud and urged Mexican officials to grant a request from the race’s apparent second-place finisher to conduct a full vote recount.
The San Francisco-based Global Exchange group watched voting at 60 of the country’s 130,000 polling places and found evidence of fraud or irregularities at each site, director Ted Lewis told a news conference.
“Yes, there was fraud, from what we could see, in small things,” Lewis said. “We can’t say that this would affect the final result. … We aren’t applying this to the whole country, nor are we generalizing.”
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka
Latest clashes kill 800 soldiers, Tamil rebels
Tamil Tiger rebels launched fresh attacks in northern Sri Lanka, where a week of fighting has killed more than 800 rebels and security forces, the military said Thursday.
The clashes in northern Jaffna Peninsula came as Sri Lanka’s president vowed the government would not bow to insurgent demands and withdraw from the north, which is claimed by the rebels as the heartland of ethnic Tamil culture.
The United States and the European Union separately called for an end to hostilities.
“We believe that the continuation of the fighting will only make the prospects for peace worse and will benefit neither side,” said Steven Mann, U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state.
SAN DIEGO
Suspected drug boss booked into U.S. jail
Suspected drug kingpin Francisco Javier Arellano Felix arrived Thursday on U.S. soil, where he was immediately rushed to a federal detention center downtown and booked, authorities said.
Arellano Felix had been captured on a sport boat in international waters Monday along with seven other men, including Arturo Villarreal Heredia, who U.S. authorities said was probably his second-in-command.
“There is no discernible leader left to fill the void” in the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, said John Fernandes, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Diego office. “I don’t consider this organization disrupted. I consider this organization defunct.”
CHICAGO
11 people wounded in drive-by shootings
Shots were fired from a van and a sedan Thursday as they sped down a residential street on the city’s South Side, wounding 11 people, police said.
Several of the wounded were believed to be members of the Gangster Disciples street gang, said police Superintendent Philip Cline.
The shots were fired before dawn, and the street was deserted when officers arrived, said Officer Marcel Bright, a police spokesman. Most of the victims – 10 men and one woman – managed to drive to a hospital about four blocks away, he said.
A 22-year-old man, whose name was not released, was in critical condition at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital with a gunshot wound in the back, authorities said. Another victim had been shot in the abdomen, and a third had an arm wound.
