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MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Sept. 23 (UPI) A French forensics team brought in to investigate at least two suspected mass grave sites near Mitrovica in Kosovo are expected to wrap up their investigation early next week, a French spokesman said Thursday.
One site has 28 bodies, and an unknown number were found in a deep mine shaft, said Col. Claude Vicaire, spokesman for the French police.
He said an initial investigation of the mine shaft, some 200 feet (60 m) deep and apparently part of the Trepeca gold mine, did not reveal any bodies, although the shaft is to deep to see what's at the bottom.
A camera put down the shaft brought back no pictures of bodies but came out smelling strongly of decay, he said.
Vicaire rejected published reports that there could be up to 700 bodies in the shaft. "My job is to check facts," he said. "It's very dangerous to say such things."
The locations of the two sites have not been disclosed. They are the only ones in Kosovo that have been kept secret for security reasons, said Kelly Moore, spokeswoman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The two sites also apparently the only ones to be investigated so far in a Serb-dominated area. Four Serbs were arrested in conjunction with the discovery.
French police, originally acting on information from ethnic Albanians of a massacre on April 14, first checked an industrial furnace in a factory in Zvecan for evidence of incinerated bodies, Vicaire said. After analyzing ashes in the furnace and pictures of smokestacks from April, police decided there was no evidence that bodies had been burned in the furnace.
But elements of the investigation led to a field nearby, where police found the bodies.
Vicaire declined to be more specific, saying only that a Bosnian policeman who is now in France also helped in the investigation.