K-For troops uncovered the first actual evidence of a mass grave when they took control of Kacanik, just over the border with Macdeonia, on Monday June 14.

American troops immediately sealed off the village and its cemetery.

BBC correspondents who visited the scene reported that there were 35 freshly dug graves in the Kacanik churchyard. Local residents said that these graves contained the bodies of 85 Kosovo Albanians.

The BBC's Paul Wood: "Kosovo Albanians say that there was an orgy of killings"

According to witness statements gathered at the scene, local people took advantage of the Serb withdrawal by removing the bodies from other sites for a decent burial. One villager said the victims, including children, were killed in April when Serbian soldiers threw grenades into a crowd and then shot all those left alive.

But a local member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) said the grave contained victims of a Serbian ethnic cleansing operation on 9 April in the neighbouring village of Proni Rakocit. The discovery of the graves was among the first to be reported back to prosecutors at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

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