UNITED NATIONS forensic investigators used a mechanical digger to remove topsoil from a remote Bosnian hillside yesterday, they began work to exhume thousands of victims of last year's Srebrenica massacre.
The use of an industrial size digger reflects the scale of the task, which seeks evidence of probably the worst atrocity Europe has witnessed since the second World War.
Bosnian Serb separatists are thought to have executed most of the adult male population of Srebrenica (an estimated 8,000 people) after they overran the Muslim enclave a year ago this week.
The exhumation of bodies is expected to take three months and will concentrate on 12 suspected mass grave sites. It began on a stifling hot afternoon yesterday, as a dozen hired Serb labourers cleared undergrowth near the hamlet of Cerska, 19 miles north west of Srebreaica.
The workers refused to talk to journalists. Many Bosnian Serbs view collaboration with the Hague tribunal as treachery.
Maj Daniel Zajac, the US commanding officer, said Bosnian Serb forces had not attempted to interfere with the work.
The area had earlier been checked for mines by Norwegian sappers.
Tribunal investigators found the remains of four bodies when they dug three small exploratory holes at the site in May.
"I'm confident we'll get to the evidence that's there," said Mr William Haglund, one of the UN team. He said it was impossible to estimate how many bodies were buried at the site.
UN investigators believe Muslim prisoners, caught last July while trying to flee Srebrenica, were lined up on the roadside, shot and pushed into pits in the embankment below them.
Three thousand men from Srebrenica are known to have been killed. The remaining 5,000 missing are presumed dead, but there is no confirmation of how they were killed.
Humanitarian workers in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have questioned the need to exhume all the bodies. They argue that there is already a mountain of evidence of war crimes after the fall of Srebrenica.