Bone DNA experts help identify Katrina victims

A Sarajevo-based body which helped identify victims of the 1990s Yugoslavia wars and last year's Asian tsunami said yesterday that it would help identify victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) said it would analyse bone samples to obtain DNA profiles enabling it to identify the bodies of those killed in the hurricane which hit the southern United States in August, killing 1228 people.

"Under an agreement between ICMP and the State of Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, ICMP will test an estimated 260 to 350 bone samples to assist in identification of victims of the August hurricane," the Commission said.

"The DNA profiles will be returned to the Louisiana authorities for matching with family members' DNA profiles there," it added.

The Commission, set up by the international community in 1996 to help search for some 30,000 people missing from the wars in former Yugoslavia, has developed a system of large-scale DNA-led identification.

It has analysed bone samples and matched their DNA with that of relatives of the missing in the former Yugoslavia and Asia, and helped identify the remains of 6000 of the 12,500 Bosnian war dead.

The ICMP said it had achieved a 100 per cent success rate with test samples sent from the Louisiana state in November. "Hurricane Katrina is a relatively recent disaster and in this case the quantity of DNA is much higher than in older bones so we are expecting to have a success rate of 100 per cent or close," ICMP chairman James Kimsey said.

- REUTERS