The New York Times

Thursday, June 10, 1999

U.S. Photos Show Ground Work at Suspected Site of Mass Grave

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON -- Photographs taken by United States spy satellites seem to show that Serbian forces dug up the bodies of their victims to hide evidence of a massacre in Kosovo, the chief Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.

The official, Kenneth H. Bacon, said the pictures provided cold scientific evidence to back up the vivid and terrified accounts of Kosovar refugees that something terrible had occurred at the village of Izbica.

Bacon had already acknowledged that the Pentagon had heard reports from refugees that Serbs were trying to conceal the evidence of massacres.

"We didn't have any evidence," Bacon said. "Now we do have some firm evidence."

Recalling that the Pentagon had received reports of killing in central-western Kosovo as early as April, Bacon displayed a satellite picture from May 15 of what analysts concluded was a site that held 143 graves.

Then he displayed a picture taken last Thursday. "This second picture shows what appears to have been a bulldozing over this area," he said, pointing to a black splotchy section.

Bacon said the Thursday photo seemed to dovetail with refugees' accounts and Albanian television reports that Serbian troops had entered Izbica on the same day and destroyed graves.

"There were reports that many bodies were exhumed and that earthmoving equipment or bulldozers could have been used to cover up the mass grave site," Bacon said. "So this is one example that we have run across recently that leads us to believe that there is some evidence supporting the refugee accounts of tampering with mass-grave sites.

"It looks as if a bulldozer or other earthmoving equipment has been run over where the individual graves used to be. But we don't have pictures of bulldozers running over this site."

He said refugees had told of having seen exhumed bodies being carried toward Klina, eight or nine miles away.