2 arrested in Bosnia for wartime killing of 78 civilians

SARAJEVO, Bosnia – Authorities in Bosnia have detained two people suspected of taking part in the killing of at least 78 civilians during the 1992-95 war, the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

The two men were apprehended in the area of Banja Luka, the main town in the Bosnian Serb-run part of the country, according to a statement.

They are suspected of crimes against humanity over June 1992 killings in the northwestern village of Velagici. Bosnian Serbs slaughtered imprisoned Bosniak civilians, who are mainly Muslims, outside the school building with automatic weapons.

The victims’ bodies were later driven away in trucks and dumped in a mass grave that was exhumed in 1996.

More than 100,000 people died during the war in Bosnia, which erupted when Bosnian Serbs rebelled over the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and moved to carve up a mini-state of their own, expelling Bosniaks and Croats from the territory.