The artificial lake at the site of the Vihovici mine near Mostar will most likely be drained in the spring, when the search for the mass grave will continue where, according to initial information, 80 to 100 victims were killed in Mostar during the 1993 war.
The spokeswoman for the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Emza Fazlic, explained that on the first day of the start of activities on the pre-investigative search of the lake, the divers found that the visibility of the lake was very poor and that at a depth of 17 meters, nothing could be seen due to a large amount of silt, which showed that nothing could be done that way.
She says that the lake will most likely be drained due to the exhumation, but that certain procedures and activities must be awaited for that process.
”We have to wait for State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) to make a project on how the lake research will be done and how it will be approached, as well as favorable weather conditions, so we can’t do anything until spring,” says Fazlic.
In addition, she emphasized that with the initiation of pre-investigation actions to search the lake, numerous citizens of Mostar came forward on the first day with information that is very important for this case and which is being checked in detail in order to be completely safe, while a plan to search the lake is being made in parallel.
According to the data of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH, 202 people are being searched for in the area of Mostar, of which 154 are citizens of Mostar, while 456 people have been exhumed from several mass graves, as well as individual graves in the area of that city to date.
