Another Serb mass grave found

Remains of victims from one of four mass graves already unearthed

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Serbian forensic experts have discovered another mass grave near a lake in southwestern Serbia.

The grave is believed to contain bodies of ethnic Albanians killed during the 1999 war in Kosovo.

A Serbian police statement on Sunday said: "Twenty-six unidentified bodies and body parts were exhumed on Saturday near Lake Perucac, not far from the town of Uzice."

It is the fifth mass grave to be uncovered in the Balkan republic since the fall from power of Slobodan Milosevic.

Uzice is 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Belgrade.

After an autopsy, Serbian police will publicly disclose the victims' identities along with the time and manner of their deaths," it said.

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The bodies are believed to be those of Kosovo Albanians transported to the site in a freezer truck and dumped in Lake Perucac during NATO air raids two years ago.

A police official told The Associated Press that "after locals noticed floating corpses in April 1999, the bodies ...were removed from the lake and transferred to a mass grave."

In May, police discovered a similar case related to a truck with bodies of dozens of Kosovo Albanians dumped into the Danube River in eastern Serbia in 1999.

The bodies were later reburied at the site of a police training camp near Belgrade.

Several grave sites recently have been discovered in Serbia proper, far from Kosovo, where former President Slobodan Milosevic's security troops are believed to have killed thousands of ethnic Albanians.

The crackdown ended with the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Opinion pollsters have said revelations of mass graves in Serbia have helped convince Serbs who either did not know or did not want to know that war crimes were committed in their name during Milosevic's turbulent 13-year rule.

Milosevic was arrested in Belgrade in June and handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague on charges of atrocities against Kosovo Albanians committed by Yugoslav forces under his command.