VUKOVAR, Croatia — Excavators dug through piles of waste at a garbage dump surrounded by sunflower fields in Croatia on Thursday (June 27), searching for bodies of victims killed in war more than three decades ago, after remains of 10 people were found earlier this month.

The mss grave was located after two years of active searching at the Petrovacka Dola dump near Vukovar. Investigators expect to find more remains, said Ivona Paltrinieri, who heads the department for missing people in the war veterans ministry.

Croatia is still trying to establish the fate of 1,797 missing people from its 1991-1995 war of independence from then-Yugoslavia, including 500 people missing from Vukovar-Srijem county, Paltrinieri said.

Investigators believe the victims found this month at the dump had been reburied there after initially being buried elsewhere, as they were covered with earth and sludge that is not typical for the site.

Paltrinieri said the remains were probably moved to the dump in January 1992, after the temporary occupation of Vukovar which was reduced to rubble by the Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary units in a three-month siege in late 1991.

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