Forensic team going to Ukraine
An international organization formed to identify the dead and missing from the 1990s Balkan conflicts is preparing to send a team of forensics experts to Ukraine as the death toll mounts more than six weeks into the war caused by Russia’s invasion.
Authorities in Kyiv have reached out to the International Commission on Missing Persons to help put names to bodies that might otherwise remain anonymous amid the fog of war.
The team – a forensic pathologist, forensic archaeologist and an expert on collecting DNA samples from bodies and from families to cross-match – is expected to travel to Ukraine early this week, Director-General Kathryne Bomberger said on Friday.
They will help identify the dead, but also document how they died – information that can feed into war crimes investigations in the future. The organization’s laboratory in The Hague, Netherlands, will build a central database cataloging evidence.