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LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - The number of civilians killed during the war in Kosovo may be no more than 2,500, according to a British Sunday newspaper.
The figure was estimated by a Spanish pathologist sent to the southern Serbian province immediately after the end of hostilities last summer to look for the bodies of ethnic Albanians killed by Serb forces.
It contrasted sharply with a claim by U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen at the height of the NATO bombing in May that up to 100,000 ethnic Albanian men were missing and might have been murdered.
The death toll was revised down to 10,000 the following month by Geoff Hoon, then a British Foreign Office minister who is now defence secretary.
The Sunday Times quoted Spanish pathologist Emilio Perez Pujol as saying: "I calculate that the final figure of dead in Kosovo will be 2,500 at the most.
"This includes lots of strange deaths that can't be blamed on anyone in particular."
Perez Pujol said the numbers of dead were far lower than the 44,000 he had been warned of, and few were in mass graves.
He said his team had arrived in Kosovo expecting to perform 2,000 post mortem examinations and work until the end of November.
"On September 12 I called my people together and said: 'We have finished here'. I informed my government and told them of the real situation.
"We had found a total of 187 bodies. Four or five had died of natural causes," he said.
The Sunday Times said the United Nations was expected to announce next month that the total number of victims uncovered is fewer than 2,000.
Many were executed, but some died during fighting and others died in NATO bombing.
The newspaper said the picture was still unclear, however, with some of the forensic teams sent by 15 countries saying they had discovered fewer bodies than anticipated and others saying there was more work to do and the death toll would rise.
The British parliament's all-party Balkans Committee will this week ask the Foreign Office to comment on the reports of a much lower death toll, the Sunday Times said.