Over 16,500 still missing from Bosnia war, says Red Cross

GENEVA - Over 16,500 people are still missing nearly 10 years after the end of the Bosnian conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

The Swiss-based humanitarian organisation said the sixth edition of its 'Book of the Missing' contained the names of 16,600 people who have disappeared or who have been reported killed but whose bodies have not been found.

"The ICRC hopes that publication of the updated book will prompt the authorities concerned and the general public to provide additional information," it said on Thursday.

Between the end of the war in 1995 and November this year, the ICRC said it received some 21,700 requests to trace missing people and that some 5,000 of these cases had been resolved.

Recent months had seen a rise in cases of identification of the remains of people previously listed missing, but families were still coming forward with fresh names, it added.

The 1992-95 war, in which 200,000 people were killed, was ended by the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accord, which divided Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic.

Mass graves holding victims of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities are still found regularly in the country.

- REUTERS