JINHA

NEWS CENTER - Two more skulls were unearthed yesterday in the excavations started in Dersim Province at a site where it is said 24 people, including women and children, were murdered during the massacre of 1938.

Turkish soldiers are estimated to have killed perhaps 80,000 people in the 1938 massacre of the civilian population of the Kurdish Dersim area. For the first time, a court has ordered an investigation into the mass graves in Dersim—a historic step in the case of the massacre, which is largely unrecognized and undiscussed in Turkey.

Human remains, including eight skulls, were found yesterday on the first day of digging at a mass grave in the Hozat district of Dersim, where 24 people from two families were burnt alive in 1938. The public prosecutor, experts and members of the families were on the scene for the historic excavation.

The excavation is expected to last for several days.

(nt/cm)